North Korea plans four new nuclear power plants - paper
Date: 18-Feb-03
Country: UK
Quoting the country's director of energy Kim Jae-rok, it said the planned power plants could produce up to 200 megawatts of power - 40 times the output of Yongbyon. "Desperate measures" were needed to tackle the country's heat and lighting shortages, it quoted Kim as saying in an interview. "This will enable us to meet the urgent need for electricity supplies in our country," he told the newspaper.
The crisis over North Korea's nuclear programme has been simmering since October, when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted to pursuing a programme to enrich uranium in violation of a 1994 accord, under which it froze its nuclear programme in exchange for two atomic power reactors and economic assistance.
Since then, North Korea has expelled IAEA inspectors, withdrawn from the treaty which aims to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and said it was ready to restart the mothballed Yongbyon reactor capable of producing plutonium for bombs.
Last week the International Atomic Energy Agency declared North Korea in breach of United Nations safeguards and sent the issue to the U.N. Security Council.
The Sunday Telegraph said Kim insisted North Korea was not producing nuclear weapons at its existing facilities and would not use the planned new plants to do so.
