| Rantburgers already know the main storyline, but check out the description of the plutonium. |
âThey have the plutonium,â he said. âWe have to assume the North Koreans can and have made a few nuclear devices.â
Heckerâs revelations were based on information gleaned during two visits to North Korea, the last in August 2005, in which he met physicists and, in a pure moment from spy fiction, was handed a specimen of weapons-grade plutonium, stored in a marmalade jar.
Hecker, who was at Los Alamos from 1973-97, gave his warning at a recent conference in Washington as one of the most authoritative observers of North Koreaâs programme. On his first visit to North Korea in 2004, Hecker was taken to the Yongbyon nuclear research centre to meet its director. His hosts brought a small steel container into the conference, containing a wooden box. âThey slid open the box and inside were two glass jars â two marmalade jars, actually â with screw-on tops,â he said. One contained powder, the other a thin scrap of metal â the â stuff you would use for the bombsâ.
âI held the plutonium and it passed the test,â he added. When he told the director it was not very warm, the latter replied: âWell Dr Hecker, thatâs because the plutonium 240 content is low, which means that itâs good bomb-grade plutonium.â
On his second visit, Hecker met the director in Pyongyang, the capital, to learn that while the North Koreans had been negotiating in China, they had also been making up to 14kg of plutonium, taking their total stock to an estimated 43kg, enough for about eight bombs.
Hecker said his main fear is that North Koreaâs impoverished regime might sell material to terrorists. âForty kilograms of plutonium, some number of briefcases anywhere in basements, in one of the 15,000 tunnels in North Korea â nobody will find it,â he said.