UN nuclear watchdog officials reached an “understanding” with North Korea on verification of the shutdown and sealing of the North’s Yongbyon reactor, Kyodo news agency said on Friday. The head of the UN delegation said he was “satisfied” with a tour of a North Korean reactor complex that the secretive state has promised to scrap under an aid-for-disarmament deal, Kyodo said.
The reactor at Yongbyon was still operating, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Nuclear Safeguards Director Olli Heinonen was also quoted as saying on his return to Pyongyang. The visit to the Yongbyon reactor, about 100 km (60 miles) north of Pyongyang, is the first by IAEA officials since Pyongyang kicked out the Vienna-based agencyÂ’s inspectors in December 2002.
“We are satisfied,” Heinonen said, adding that the IAEA team was able to see all of the sites it had wanted to, including a plutonium reprocessing plant where weapons-grade material can be extracted from spent fuel rods. After talks later on Friday, Heinonen said his group had reached an understanding with North Korea on shutting down and sealing the reactor, but that the question of when the shutdown would begin was up to the six countries involved in talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear arms programme.