Report reveals Burma's 2014 nukes target

Burma is building a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium facilities with the help of North Korea and aims to have a nuclear bomb in five years, according to a two-year investigative report.

The investigation, conducted by regional security expert Dr Desmond Ball and Mae Sot-based journalist Phil Thornton, is based on radio intercepts and interviews with two defectors close to the clandestine operation codenamed ''The UF6'' project.

One of the defectors, identified as ''Moe Jo'', was a former military officer sent to Russia as part of Burma's ''nuclear battalion'' programme to train 1,000 people. The other, ''Tin Min'', worked as a bookkeeper for a businessman close to the junta.

According to the report, published in full in today's edition of Spectrum, Burma has 10 uranium mines, two uranium refineries and two nuclear reactor sites.

The Myaing civil reactor site is located in Magwe in the lower central part of the country. The second ''secret'', or military, site was built inside the smallest of three mountains by North Koreans at Naung Laing and houses a 10-megawatt light-water research reactor. Tin Min said Burma's rationale for having a nuclear programme was nonsense.

''They say it's to produce medical isotopes for health purposes in hospitals. How many hospitals in Burma have nuclear science? Burma can barely get electricity up and running. It's nonsense,'' he said.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently voiced concerns North Korea was transferring weapons and nuclear technology to Burma.

Uranium deposits from the mines have been sent to Russia and Iran for evaluation and both processing plants are close to the Irrawaddy River, one near the Tha Pa Na Military Science and Technology Development Centre and the other near the Thabike Kyin township.

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

Tin Min claims that a businessman, Tay Za, a close associate of Burmese leader General Than Shwe, told him the regime had nuclear dreams and was serious about the programme. ''They're aware they cannot compete with Thailand with conventional weapons. They want to play nuclear poker like North Korea. They hope to combine nuclear and air defence missiles,'' he said.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak, the head of the Institute of Security and International Studies, said while the evidence was preliminary and needed to be justified it is ''something that would completely change the regional security status quo''.

''It would move Burma from not just being a pariah state, but a rogue state, one that jeopardises the security and wellbeing of its neighbours,'' he said.

While Burma has key parts of the nuclear fuel cycle in place, it needs a plutonium processing plant to produce enough weapons-grade Plutonium-239 to produce a bomb.

Moe Jo said Russian experts were already ''teaching plutonium reprocessing'' at the site.