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.