WASHINGTON: North Korea's main nuclear site appears to have suffered water supply problems that could lead to an escape of radioactivity in an accident, a US think tank said Monday.
Citing recent satellite images, the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University said the Yongbyon complex seems to be struggling to ensure a stable water supply following heavy rain and floods last summer.
The problems pose particular risks for North Korea's first light water reactor which is near completion, it said.
The regime does not have experience operating it and "the rapid loss of water used to cool the reactor could result in a serious safety problem," analyst Nick Hansen wrote on the institute's blog, 38 North.
North Korea has more experience with its restarted plutonium production reactor at Yongbyon but its "lack of airtight containment could lead to the escape of some radioactivity even in small accidents."
The published analysis comes after South Korean President Park Geun-Hye warned that Yongbyon could witness a Chernobyl-style disaster, one of a series of comments that enraged North Korea, whose official media accused her of speaking "nonsense gibberish."
The 38 North analysis downplayed the risks of a Chernobyl-scale disaster, saying Yongbyon was smaller than the Soviet-built station in Ukraine where a 1986 accident killed 30 people in an explosion and another 2,500 afterward in related illnesses.
"However, a radioactive release into the atmosphere or river would cause an expanded local area of contamination," the analysis said.
"Also, Pyongyang's likely lack of transparency could create a regional crisis, panicking the public in surrounding countries and raising tensions with governments anxious for further information."
North Korea knocked down a cooling tower in 2008 as part of a US-backed six-nation disarmament agreement but has more recently vowed to boost its nuclear "deterrent" in response to what Kim Jong-Un's regime describes as US hostility.
To replace the tower's cooling function at the plutonium facility, North Korea appears to have connected pipes from the new light water reactor's cooling system but as a result needs more river water, the analysis said.
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