How would the situation have been better if the IAEA didn't exist?
By having an organisation that knows what the heck it is doing.
Here is Hans Blix on the NK program:
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/EPI/bioter/yellowcakeotherquarries.html
As Blix told an audience in Moscow in late October, "Inspectors may be more likely to encounter smoke than smoking guns. However, smoke might be enough to trigger government concern and action." He noted that in the case of discovering North Korea's nuclear activity, inspectors never found the weapons program. Instead, it was the discovery that Pyongyang had been producing more plutonium than had been declared that produced the 1994 crisis.
What he didn't say was that NK led him around by the nose and that it was the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies that discovered the plutonium enrichment program 2 years before Blix finally conceded that it was more than just a "primitive" effort.
To set the mood you have to have a script. North Korea wrote it and has been used several times after as we have seen with Iraq, Syria Lybia and Iran:
24 March 1992
North Korean Ambassador to the United Nations Ri Tcheul says that North Korea has no plans to develop nuclear weapons. Furthermore, he says that North Korea will soon accept IAEA inspections.
Robert Evans, Reuters, 24 March 1992.
The US gives him the ammunition on a silver platter
7 May 1992
As a means of ensuring that the IAEA team does not "miss anything" during inspections, US officials provide IAEA Director General Hans Blix and his top aides intelligence briefings in September 1991, March 1992, and 7 May 1992. During the last briefing, Blix is given a "virtual reality" tour of the Yongbyon nuclear complex. US officials place a great deal of emphasis on the reprocessing facility, which North Korea has identified as a "radiochemical laboratory." Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997), pp.268-269
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So off Hans goes to inspect the site that the US had identified as a reprocessing facility but true to form he reports back that although a “tiny” amount of plutonium had been extracted it was FAR too small to produce a bomb:
11-16 May 1992
IAEA Director General Hans Blix arrives in Pyongyang prior to the IAEA inspection team to meet with North Korean Prime Minister Yon Hyong-muk, Minister of Atomic Energy Choe Hak-kun and first Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Kang Sok-ju. He is reassured that the inspectors will be allowed access to any site in North Korea regardless if it is listed in the initial report submitted on 4 May 1992 to the IAEA.
In the course of the meetings, Blix visits the unfinished nuclear reprocessing laboratory at Yongbyon. After seeing the site, he reports that North Korea is building a nuclear fuel reprocessing facility capable of processing spent uranium into plutonium. He says that North Korea has already produced a "tiny quantity" of plutonium. However, the quantity is much less than what is required to build a nuclear weapon. According to the North Koreans, the reprocessing plant will be used to produce mixed-oxide fuel for future fast-breeder reactors. North Korea also expresses interest in building gas-graphite reactors because it can do so indigenously.
David Albright, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November 1992, pp.36-40; IAEA Newsbriefs, June-July 1992, p.3; Ann Maclachlan, Nucleonics Week, 21 May 1992, pp.7-8; Michael Mazarr, North Korea And The Bomb: A Case Study in Nonproliferation, (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), p.79; T.R. Reid, Washington Post, 17 May 1992.
A week later the first inspection team visits the site and once again state that it is just a primitive site far from ready to…..well you get the rest.
25 May – 7 June 1992
Willi Theis leads the first IAEA inspection team to North Korea. During the inspections of Yongbyon, the team is able to verify the location of fissionable materials as stated in North Korea’s "initial report," which was submitted to the IAEA on 4 May 1992. In doing so, they visit the six-story building the size of two football fields designated as the "radiochemical laboratory." The team discovers that the building is only 80 percent complete, and that the equipment inside is only 40 percent ready for full-scale production. According to one IAEA official, "the works inside the building are ‘extremely primitive’ and far from ready to produce quantities of plutonium needed for a stockpile of atomic weapons."
A month later the IAEA spokesman reiterates the the evil CIA’s concerns are blown out of proportion….. See the pattern yet?
15 June 1992
According to IAEA spokesman David Kyd, the North Korean technology that the IAEA saw at Yongbyon was "30 years old." Therefore, the IAEA disagrees with CIA reports that North Korea will be able to produce a nuclear weapon in the very near future. However, before making an accurate assessment, the IAEA must conduct additional inspections.
Reuters, 15 June 1992; Roland Prinz, Washington Times, 16 June 1992, p.A7.
Here he is just stating the obvious….
July 1992
IAEA Director General Hans Blix informs a US congressional panel that IAEA inspectors have been unable to verify that North Korea has not been producing plutonium for weapons at Yongbyon.
Compuserve-Executive News Service, 16 September 1992.
Then we have Hans telling Congress that NK denies everything
August 1992
IAEA Director General Hans Blix testifies before the US Congress that North Korea has "emphatically denied" separating additional amounts of plutonium.
Mark Hibbs, Nucleonics Week, 18 February 1993, pp.16-17
A year later the CIA is still trying to get Hans to believe that the North Koreans are shying him on.
22 February 1993
Nearly one dozen US intelligence satellite photographs of North Korean installations and attempts at deception at the facilities at Yongbyon are presented to a closed session of the IAEA Board of Governors. The senior North Korean representative at the meeting, Ho Jin-yun, says that the photographs are fake. Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997), p.277.
The IAEA gets tough or does it? Why does China need a concession of an extra month?
24 February 1993
The IAEA passes a resolution stating that North Korea has one month to grant inspectors access to two sites suspected of being part of its nuclear weapons program. The IAEA says that access to the sites is "essential and urgent." As a concession to Chinese requests, the Board provides a one-month grace period for North Korea’s compliance on the inspection. The Board makes it clear that if North Korea does not act, it will take the issue to the UN Security Council for international sanctions or other actions.
Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997), p.278; Steve Paga, Reuters, 26 February 1993; Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post, 25 February 1993, p.A24; Teruaki U, Reuters, 26 February 1993
A year later and IAEA is not only dismissing the CIA but other Western intelligence agencies that are yelling that the facility is SPECIFICALLY intended for plutonium separation.
28 February 1994
According to Western intelligence sources, the design of North Korea's reprocessing complex being built at Yongbyon is intended specifically for the use of plutonium separation technologies developed by a consortium of 13 European counties called the European Company for the Chemical Processing of Irradiated Fuels (Eurochemic). However, IAEA officials from the Department of Safeguards believe that the plutonium extraction process is "no mystery." Similarly, Russian officials claim that the former Soviet Union furnished North Korea with the reprocessing technology.
Mark Hibbs, Nucleonics Week, 28 February 1998, pp.6-7.
So now the IAEA comes to a “conclusion” completely ignoring the agencies' assessment in the quote box above...
13 September 1994
The IAEA states in a confidential report that inspections of the reprocessing facility at Yongbyon have yielded no evidence that plutonium has been extracted there since 1993. The conclusion is reached by analyzing nuclear samples taken from the radiochemical lab [reprocessing facility] at Yongbyon in March and May 1994. There is suspicion, however, that fuel rods were processed at a second facility where inspections were not allowed. The report confirms that North Korea has not permitted inspections of two major nuclear facilities.
Neue Zuericher Zeitung (Zuerich), 15 September 1994.
All is well according to Hans
28 November 1994
The IAEA confirms that North Korea has frozen operations at the 5MW gas-graphite reactor, reprocessing facility, and fuel fabrication facility. It also confirms that construction has been stopped at the 50MW gas-graphite reactor at Yongbyon and the 200MW gas-graphite reactor at Taechon.
Reuters, 28 November 1994.
Well not quite….It appears that the IAEA is now claiming to have had "minimal" access to the plutonium facility.
13 October 1995
IAEA Director General Hans Blix says in a report to the UN Security Council that North Korea has denied the IAEA inspectors permission to evaluate the plutonium levels in the nuclear spent fuel. Blix adds that North Korea has only provided the IAEA with minimal access to its Yongbyon nuclear facilities.
KBS-1 Radio Network (Seoul), 14 October 1995; in FBIS-EAS-95-202, 14 October 1995.
Three years later the evil CIA raises another flag
6 September 1998
The CIA suspects that North Korea has dumped liquid plutonium waste on the grounds of its Yongbyon nuclear facility. The liquid plutonium waste is believed to have been stored underground in unsuitable storage tanks which could leak. The CIA believes that North Korea used these containers in an effort to hide the plutonium waste from IAEA inspectors. Newsweek, 6 September 1998.
OOOOPS…. remember the reactor shutdown? Those seals didn’t work so well. To its credit it only took the IAEA 5 years to discover it.
24 March 1999
IAEA officials report that critical parts of the North Korean 50MW gas-graphite reactor at Yongbyon have been missing since 1994 when IAEA inspectors first arrived at the site. The parts are vital for controlling the nuclear reaction in the reactor's graphite core. The equipment can be used in the construction of another nuclear reactor.
Stewart Stogel and Ben Barber, Washington Times, 24 March 1999, p.3.
The rest is history.
