North Korea restarts plutonium reactor: institute
Source: AFP
North Korea appears to have restarted a reactor that produces plutonium, making good on threats to boost its stockpile of nuclear weapons, a US think tank said Wednesday.
Satellite imagery taken on August 31 shows white steam coming out of a building next to the five-megawatt plutonium reactor at Yongbyon, the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University said.
The image shows that North Korea "appears to have put the reactor into operation," researchers Nick Hansen and Jeffrey Lewis wrote on the institute's blog, 38 North.
The reactor "is capable of producing six kilograms of plutonium a year that can be used by Pyongyang to slowly increase the size of its nuclear weapons stockpile," it said.
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MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia said on Thursday that North Korea was apparently conducting work on a nuclear reactor, saying the aged facility was in such a "nightmarish state" it could cause a disaster.
"It is obvious that some works are being conducted, and for a long time at that. According to some signs, steps were indeed being taken to relaunch it," the Interfax news agency quoted a diplomatic source as saying.
"But we do not have any information that the reactor has been relaunched... The reactor is in a nightmarish state, it is a design dating back to the 1950s... For the Korean peninsula this could entail terrible consequences, if not a man-made catastrophe."
http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/world/story/russia-warns-n-korea-work-nightmarish-reactor-20130912
