We have to again gear up the technology to produce power for industrial and residential use. It has been about over twenty years since we completed our last Nuclear power plants. I was involved(at the edges) of getting some of last plants built in the US. Plant Hatch and the Baxley facility, both in Georgia.

Japan and and France are so far ahead of us in this area, that it makes us look like tenth century goat herders.

"They fired a warning flare and then in three minutes the whole thing came tumbling down in a massive cloud of smoke,"

That would have been an appropriate time to drop a deep penetration MOAB directly on the containment structure. The Russians and Third World countries are noted for skimping on the construction of safety features.

North Korea also has been disabling — but not destroying — more sensitive parts of the nuclear complex,

I would be more interested in watching them unload the actual reactor vessels and then completely disabling the ability to load them back up.

That cooling tower destruction was symbolic, at best.

So we take a non-nuclear power and through our aid give them the means to build nuclear weapons. They sell ballistic missiles and attempt to proliferate nuclear weapons to terrorists states. Meanwhile we bribe them in various ways and in turn they lie to us, over and over.

Now, in return for food, fuel oil, machine parts, prestige, etc., they destroy a cooling tower of a nuclear plant that is at the end of its life. No turn over of weapons, no information on uranium or proliferation.

In Iraq we keep a non-nuclear terrorist state from acquiring nuclear weapons. We also receive the side benefits of dismantling Libya's nuclear program and A.Q. Kahn's Nuke-R-Us business. Iraq has the chance to be a relatively nonviolent democracy in the middle east. North Koreans get to continue to starve.

The first you consider a victory, the later an evil scheme hatched by Dick Cheney?

North Korea’s destroyed it’s main cooling tower as part of it’s effort to show the world it’s committment to being open about it’s nuclear ambitions/stockpiles. Even the NYT in a roundabout way is acknowledging the breakt...

Although the greyness of the video makes me wonder if, rather than just always being filmed by bad cameras, North Korea is ACTUALLY a greyish, grainy country.

From Calvin's dad:

Q. How come old photographs are always black and white? Didn't they have color film back then?
A. Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It's just that the world was black and white then. The world didn't turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
Q. But then why are old paintings in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn't artists have painted it that way?
A. Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane.
Q. But... But how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn't their paints have been shades of gray back then?
A. Of course, but they turned colors like everything else did in the '30s.
Q. So why didn't old black and white photos turn color too?
A. Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?

Clearly North Korea is still living in the 1930's.