US expert: North Korea's nuclear disarmament will take up to 15 years

Hecker Lecturer at Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. Photo: AP

Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico and now a lecturer at the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation, argues that the best the United States can hope for is a phased denuclearization.

The steps and timeline for denuclearization were laid out in a report just circulated in Washington by Mr. Hecker and two colleagues at the Stanford Center.

In its report, the Stanford team found three overlapping phases of denuclearization that would take a total of 10 years. The first phase, which would take up to a year, would be to shut down recruitment, industry, and military operations.

The second phase, which takes about five years, is the gradual reduction of facilities, equipment, and weapons. The final and most difficult phase, which could take up to ten years, is the destruction or curtailment of factories and programs.

Decontamination and decommissioning of a radioactive material processing plant alone can take a decade or more.

North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear test site has been closed. Photo: AP

In an interview on May 27, Hecker said that according to his personal estimate, denuclearization would take about 15 years due to the political and technological upheavals that the US and North Korea would have to face if they wanted to promote a historic agreement.

Dr. Hecker argues that the only safe way to dismantle North Korea's nuclear warheads is to ask the North Korean engineers who built them to do so.

The Trump administration has not provided details about the specific steps it is considering toward denuclearizing North Korea, or what demands it plans to make if Mr. Trump meets Mr. Kim.

Their focus is simply on complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.