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| The fuel fabrication facility at Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, North Korea (2008). [Wiki Commons] |
By John Power
Pyongyang confirmed that its nuclear facility is back online, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about the program.
With the announcement by state media that its main nuclear facility has resumed normal operations, North Korea’s atomic weapons program is back in the public eye.
The news, reported by the Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday, dovetails with a report released in April by the Institute for Science and International Security, which cited satellite imagery as evidence that the facility’s plutonium reactor was back online.
The Yongbyon nuclear complex was shuttered in 2007 as a result of international denuclearization talks involving the United States, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan. Then, in 2013, at a time of elevated tensions with the U.S. and South Korea, Pyongyang declared its intention to restart the facility.
In a typically bellicose statement on Tuesday, the head of the country’s atomic energy agency warned that Pyongyang was ready to deploy nuclear weapons against the U.S. at “any time” if it didn’t desist with its “reckless hostile policy.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat