In what could amount to some housekeeping against the day the Department of Energy has a part to play in North Korean nuclear disarmament, Congress plans to extend the agency’s authority to accept weapon-grade fissile materials for sites around the world through 2023.
The extension is part of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), approved Thursday by the House and waiting on a Senate vote as early as next week. The secretary of energy was authorized to accept “high-risk, proliferation-attractive fissile materials, radiological materials, and related equipment at vulnerable sites worldwide” by the 2005 NDAA, but that authority would expire Jan. 1, absent an extension.
President Donald Trump met June 12 in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, but the meeting did not produce a detailed agreement about Pyongyang’s burgeoning nuclear arsenal. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — the former congressman and CIA director — met with North Korean officials on July 5, after which the regime lambasted Washington’s “gangster-like” approach to the nuclear negotiations.
On Wednesday, during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Pompeo acknowledged in response to questions from lawmakers that North Korea is still producing fissile materials, but that the White House nevertheless hoped to achieve what Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) called “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization” of the country by the end of Trump’s first term in January 2021.
Toward that end, “there is an awful long way to go,” Pompeo said.
