North Korea says in last stage of enriching uranium

[Heidi]

Source: Reuters

Fri Sep 4, 2009 3:20am EDT

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Friday it was closer to a second way of making nuclear weapons, a move analysts saw as a new tactic to put pressure on the international community after a month of conciliatory gestures.

The chief U.S. envoy for the North, Stephen Bosworth, said the enrichment claim was "of concern." He was in Beijing on a trip to Asia to discuss ways to bring Pyongyang back to long-stalled negotiations on giving up its nuclear ambitions.

"Experimental uranium enrichment has successfully been conducted to enter into completion phase," the North's KCNA news agency quoted its United Nations delegation as saying in a letter to the head of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC).

The United States has long suspected the North of having a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons. Experts have said it has not developed anything near a full-scale uranium program while it has enough plutonium for six to eight bombs.



Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5826IG20090904

[DCKit]

1. They're China's problem.

Paying attention to them only validates Lil' Kim's sense of self-importance - Until they begin threatening their peaceful neighbors.

[tclambert]

2. Enriched uranium bombs have a simpler design than plutonium bombs.

No implosion required. You simply ram two sub-critical masses together to make critical mass. Much more reliable. "Little Boy," the Hiroshima bomb, was this type.

[IDFbunny]

3. Simple, doable, but requires a lot of material.

If one wants to cause a catastrophe on the cheap you could make a thousand dirty bombs for the same material. Explode a dirty bomb on a city and you still have thousands dead from radiation poisoning and the city is permanently lost even if there is little damage.