It also seems ready to cease construction of its reactors and seal its reprocessing facilities.

By the end of the decade Japan plans to open a large reprocessing facility of its own that would convert nuclear waste into more plutonium.

Early this year, however, before inspectors arrived, satellite photographs showed trucks pulling up to the reprocessing facility, perhaps to cart away equipment.

But officials familiar with the intelligence said that this did not necessarily mean that the North was now running the the main reprocessing facility.

In 1998, the intelligence community raised alarms about a large cave that they suspected was the site of a hidden reactor and reprocessing facility.

Of the seven, the two most important are a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor and a small reprocessing facility that can convert used fuel rods into plutonium.

They did not show me the reprocessing facility.

"The reprocessing facility doesn't produce electricity," he said.

"We don't believe that the main reprocessing facility has been very active," a senior administration official said in a recent interview.

The report estimates it would cost 6,000 million roubles to build reprocessing facilities, which Russia cannot afford.