Rogue Nations Booming

Jane's Information Group reports that North Korea's nuclear plant is dangerously unstable.

The threat of a nuclear accident on the Korean peninsula is significant, and not confined to potential fallout from the testing of a device. The resuscitation of North Korea's nuclear energy research programme in 2003 in the context of a devastated, technologically underdeveloped and unsafe industrial infrastructure means that all related activities are vulnerable.

Despite an ability to mobilise thousands of civilians to assist in the aftermath of an accident, severe resource constraints, the lack of know-how and the absence of safety procedures mean that it would be difficult for Pyongyang to prevent even a small incident from spiralling out of control.

If an accident took place at Yongbyon, where the country's main nuclear facility is located, the first affected would be the local population of some 120,000 people who live in the county.

Radioactive fallout could potentially affect at least 12 million people living in the populous west of the country in which Yongbyon is situated, while millions in the neighbouring states of South Korea, Japan, the far east of Russia and China would also be at risk. China's eastern provinces, for instance, which include not just remote Manchuria but also the increasingly prosperous Liaoning and Beijing itself, are proximate enough to be vulnerable.

Thanks, Jimmy Carter! That treaty he won the Nobel Peace Prize for facilitating sure did do a number on that pesky nuclear program. But wait, there's more great news coming from the diplomatic solution to Iran. Have a look!

Iran has warned the UN's atomic agency not to refer it to the Security Council over its nuclear programme.

A referral could lead to UN sanctions against the Islamic republic.

Tehran hinted that such a move could prompt it to start uranium enrichment as well as a uranium conversion process that has already been resumed.

The remarks came after the UK foreign secretary described as "unhelpful" an assertion by Iran's president that Iran had a right to produce nuclear energy.

The US and the EU want Iran to give up any idea of enrichment capability.

Tehran recently resumed uranium processing, an activity that had been suspended since November 2004 while talks were held with three European countries - the UK, France and Germany - about its long-term nuclear plans.

Allow me to translate, for those of you who don't speak terrorist: "If you try to stop us from enriching Uranium, so help us, we'll... Uh... We'll enrich Uranium!"

Seriously, though, if the United Nations had any testicular fortitude whatsoever, the international community would have shown Iran and North Korea long ago that this kind of behavior is completely and totally unacceptable. Instead, it's the same old game of grabass we've become used to, where diplomats talk and talk and talk until they're blue in the face, only to be met with the proverbial reply of "Are we done now? 'Cause while you've been talking, we've gotten way backlogged on developing our illegal nuclear program. Can we go?"

Unbe-friggin'-lievable.