06/04/2013, 00.00
KOREA - UNITED STATES
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Pyongyang, "important" progress towards reopening Yongbyon nuclear reactor

Reported by a source linked to the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Satellite images show that within "one or two months" at most the plant will be able to restart production of plutonium. Kim regime concludes "repair of the cooling system."

Seoul (AsiaNews / Agencies) - North Korea is making "significant" progress in reopening of the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. Within one, at most two months, it will resume production of plutonium and allow the Kim regime to "accelerate" its atomic program. This was stated by the website 38 North, connected to the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, examining recently taken satellite images, which show "a significant advance" in the construction of a gas-graphite reactor of five megawatts .

In April, Pyongyang had announced its intention to reactivate the reactor. It has a capacity of 5 megawatts and was stopped in 2007 as part of the agreements reached by the six-party talks on nuclear disarmament. Since December of 2008, Pyongyang left talks - which include the two Koreas, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan - and began an aggressive politics especially towards Seoul, and in recent weeks even towards Beijing, a historical ally of the North which has repeatedly intervened to appease the warlike proclamations of the Kim regime.

The decision to reopen the reactor took place in the days following the third nuclear test, carried out on 12 February, and that has led to a further tightening of UN sanctions. For American-Korean researchers the satellite images show that the North has "completed the repair of the cooling system needed to restart and use the reactor." However, add to the experts, the availability of fuel to power the reactor "remains uncertain".

Light-water nuclear reactors are usually used for civilian purposes. The United States, South Korea and Japan, however, have raised doubts about the real intentions of North Korea, which could use the plant to produce six kilos of plutonium per year. A large enough quantity, experts warn, to build atomic weapons.

 

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