THAT'S HOW YOU FEEL, NORTH KOREA?!!? (BLOG)

SEOUL, South Korea – New satellite images show construction under way at North Korea's main atomic complex, apparent proof that Pyongyan...

SEOUL, South Korea – New satellite images show construction under way at North Korea's main atomic complex, apparent proof that Pyongyang is making good on its pledge to build a nuclear powerreactor, according to a private American security institute.

North Korea vowed in March to build a light-water reactor using its own nuclear fuel, and two American experts who recently visited the North have reportedly said that construction has begun.

Light-water reactors are ostensibly for civilian energy purposes, but the power plant would give the North a reason to enrich uranium. At low levels, uranium can be used in power reactors, but at higher levels it can be used in nuclear bombs. While light-water reactors are considered less prone to misuse than heavy-water reactors, once the process of uranium enrichment is mastered, it is relatively easy to enrich further to weapons-grade levels.

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North Korea is pursuing an arsenal of atomic weapons, so all its nuclear projects are of intense interest to its neighbors and to the United States. It carried out nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, drawing international condemnation and U.N. sanctions.

The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security on Thursday released commercial satellite images from Nov. 4 that show a rectangular structure being built, with at least two cranes visible at the complex. It estimated North Korea was constructing a 25 to 30 megawatt light-water reactor.

The institute based its estimate on information from the recent trip to Yongbyon by Siegfried Hecker, former director of the U.S. Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory, and Jack Pritchard, a former U.S. envoy for negotiations with North Korea.

It said Hecker told the institute "that the new construction seen in the satellite imagery is indeed the construction of the experimental light-water reactor."

The institute said the amount of low-enriched uranium needed for a 25 to 30 megawatt reactor could vary "depending on the design of the reactor and whether it will be optimized for electricity production or weapon-grade plutonium production."