The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says North Korea has restarted its nuclear facility at Yongbyon, North Korea.
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North Korea is also known to possess this technology as well.
“Resumption of the activities of the five megawatt reactor, the expansion of centrifuge-related facility, reprocessing-these are some of the examples of the areas [of activity indicated at Yongbyon]”, head of the IAEA Yukiya Amano told a news conference.
The type of plutonium suitable for a nuclear bomb typically needs to be extracted from spent nuclear reactor fuel. It also suggested that North Korea may have been extracting spent fuel for reprocessing as it requires that the reactor be stopped.
The director of US National Intelligence, James Clapper, warned in February that the North could begin recovering plutonium from the reactor’s spent fuel “within a matter of weeks to months”.
The website 38 North reported last week, based on commercial satellite imagery, that exhaust plumes had been detected twice in May from the thermal plant at Yongbyon’s Radiochemical Laboratory, the site’s main reprocessing installation. Currently, inspectors from the IAEA are not being permitted to enter North Korea and conduct on-the-ground inspections of its nuclear facilities.
The Yongbyon reactor was shut down in 2007 but, in 2013, Pyongyang started renovating it after its third nuclear test. In September 2015, the North said that Yongbyon was operating in order to improve the “quality and quantity” of its nuclear weapons, as reported by Reuters.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
“As a responsible nuclear weapons state, our republic will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes”, Kim said while addressing a rare party gathering in Pyongyang. It carried test out a fourth on January 6.
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North Korea has come under tightening worldwide pressure over its nuclear weapons program, including tougher United Nations sanctions adopted in March backed by its lone major ally China, following its most recent nuclear blast and ballistic missile tests.
