Burma with Nukes?

Oh great. Now it looks like the Burmese government, with the help of the North Koreans, is building plutonium processing factories hidden in caves and seeking to create nuclear weapons of its own. I wonder if the cowardly ASEAN and Thailand will give up on their isolationist thinking and get busy with this threat. Probably not. Thailand needs Burma's natural gas and teak, and the corruption factor often stops serious action.

The Bangkok Post reports under their Investigative Reports on their website and in the Sunday Spectrum section.

Burma has at least two uranium refining and processing plants in operation for crushing, grinding, cleaning and milling (refining) the uranium ore into ''yellowcake'' (U308), a concentrate of uranium oxides in powder form. Yellow cake is later converted to uranium hexafluoride (UF6) for enrichment to provide fuel for reactors or fissle material for nuclear weapons. Tin Min claims that businessman Tay Za told him the regime has nuclear dreams, and they are serious.

''They're aware they cannot compete with Thailand with conventional weapons. They [the regime] want to play nuclear poker like North Korea. They hope to combine the nuclear and air defence missiles. Tay Za told me the nuclear programme is known as the 'UF6 Project' and is the responsibility of General Maung Aye.''

Both processing plants are close to the Irrawaddy River, one is seven kilometres from the river and is near the Tha Pa Na Military Science and Technology Development Center and the other plant is near the Thabike Kyin township.

Being close to the river allows the regime to use barges to transport the heavy ore rather than rely on the inadequate roads.

Tin Min says as Tay Za controls much of the shipping in and out of Burma it is easy for him to organise getting the equipment to the nuclear sites from Rangoon.

''He arranges for army trucks to pick up the containers of equipment from the North Korean boats that arrive in Rangoon and transport them at night by highway to the river or direct to the sites.''

Moe Jo estimated that there were more than five North Koreans working at the Thabike Kyin plant. He said Russian cleaning machines were used to ''wash'' the ore and that Burma has provided yellowcake to both North Korea and Iran.

GoogleEarth imagery published in 2007 shows a facility with what looks like four giant ''thickening tanks'' in which the uranium bearing solution is separated from the ground ore before being converted to yellowcake.

HAS BURMA THE CAPACITY TO PRODUCE A NUCLEAR WEAPON?

The essence of Moe Jo and Tin Win's testimonies is that Burma has key parts of the nuclear fuel cycle already in place. Moe Jo told us that the army ''planned'' to build a plutonium reprocessing plant at Naung Laing, and that Russian experts were already ''teaching plutonium reprocessing'' at the site.

A ''nuclear battalion'' was established by the regime in 2000 to work on the ''weaponisation'' aspects of the nuclear programme. It is based near the village of Taungdaw, just west of the Naung Laing complex. The operations component is in another underground complex in the nearby Setkhya Mountains. It includes engineering, artillery and communications on operational aspects of weapons design, delivery capability and a command and control centre.

Moe Jo says by 2012, Burma will have 1,000 people trained, access to uranium, is refining yellowcake and has two light water reactors.

''You don't need 1,000 people in the fuel cycle or to run a nuclear reactor. It's obvious there is much more going on.''

These reactors are not as efficient in producing fissionable plutonium as heavy-water reactors, but as North Korea has shown with their reactor, it may be slow and more complex, but it is capable. For Burma to be able to extract plutonium from the spent fuel rods and to separate plutonium-239 from plutonium-240 it needs to construct a plutonium reprocessing plant so it can produce seven to eight kilograms of weapon-grade Plutonium-239 a year, enough for one bomb a year.

In the event that the testimonies of the defectors are proved, the alleged ''secret'' reactor could be capable of being operational and producing one bomb a year, every year, after 2014.

A Burmese nuclear weapons programme would require external support, going beyond rudimentary Russian training and North Korean assistance with the current uranium refining capabilities and reactor operations. But North Korea taking on a greater role in helping Burma get its bomb cannot be rule out. They would be more than interested in providing limited amounts of fissionable plutonium in return for yellowcake.

It would be in North Korea's military interest, and in line with their nuclear posturing, to construct a secret plutonium reprocessing plant in Burma, complementing the secret reactor, in exchange for access to the fissionable product. The defectors talked explicitly of the regime meeting their nuclear programme objectives by having a ''handful of bombs ready by 2020''.

According to all the milestones identified by the defectors, Burma's nuclear programme is on schedule.

It is feasible and achievable. Unfortunately, it is not as bizarre or ridiculous as many people would like to think. Burma's regional neighbours need to watch carefully, especially for signs of a reprocessing plant. If the regime starts building that then the only explanation is that they plan to build a bomb.

A Burma with nuclear capability is a worry, if the regime's response to last year's Cyclone Nargis is a benchmark.

Their response was to treat it as a national security threat, by banning journalists, ignoring offers of outside help for weeks, while leaving their people to die in their thousands. The region cannot expect any more from the regime if there is any sort of nuclear accident.