N. Korean reactor being disabled

A team of U.S. experts has begun disabling North Korea’s nuclear weapons-making facilities, U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Monday.

Casey told reporters in Washington that the disabling of the North’s nuclear reactor at Yongbyon “is a positive first step in this process, and we certainly hope to see it continue.”

He gave no details about the specific steps the team was taking.

“This is going to be a process that is going to take some time,” he said.

The North shut down Yongbyon in July and promised to disable it by year’s end in exchange for energy aid and political concessions from other nations participating in talks on its nuclear program: the U.S., China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

The main U.S. envoy to the talks, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, has said the experts would disable the reactor to a point that would require North Korea to work at least a year to restart it.

Washington hopes that future talks will yield an agreement for North Korea to dismantle the facility entirely, and it wants the nuclear bombs Pyongyang is believed to have built to be confiscated.

The country conducted its first nuclear test detonation in October 2006 and is believed to have enough weapons-grade plutonium to make about a dozen bombs.