“All disablement steps are welcome and will slow the North down. However, the North defines disablement as being reversible,” said Siegfried Hecker, one of the few U.S. scientists to have visited the Soviet-era Yongbyon complex.

“Disabling means that it will be more difficult, but not impossible, to resume operations — that is, it will take time, effort and money,” Hecker, a professor at Stanford University in California, wrote in an e-mail to Reuters.

A team of U.S. specialists goes to the impoverished communist state on Thursday to implement an international deal under which Pyongyang agreed to disable its nuclear plant by the end of this year in exchange for huge aid and an end to its ostracism from the outside world.

But analysts said North Korea — which has successfully leveraged its rudimentary nuclear capability to win diplomatic concessions — would not sign off on a permanent stoppage at the complex that produces nuclear fuel and turns the spent product into arms-grade plutonium.

North Korea shut the facilities, which are estimated to make enough plutonium a year for one nuclear bomb, in July as a part of the deal it struck with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.

Hecker said that in their current stand-down mode, the facilities could be restarted in a matter of days, but the International Atomic Energy Agency would be aware of such a move because of monitoring equipment it has installed.

In the next step due to begin this week, nuclear equipment is likely to be taken out as part of a low-level disablement that could be reversed in about a year, said Kim Tae-woo, a senior research fellow at the South’s Korea Institute for Defence Analyses.

“High-level disablement would be like pouring cement into the insides of the car with no tires,” Kim said. “Low level would be like leaving the engine but just pulling out the generator so the car doesn’t start.”

The ultimate goal of the six-country process is for North Korea to take apart its nuclear facilities, account for all the fissile material and nuclear weaponry it already has and turn it over to the international community.

Some analysts estimate that Pyongyang, which conducted a first nuclear test last year, may already have enough fissile material to make several nuclear warheads.

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