North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited a uranium enrichment facility while calling for new centrifuges to boost supplies of weapons-grade material for nuclear bombs, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Friday.
The report on Kim’s tour of the Nuclear Weapons Institute and the production base was accompanied by a series of photos that offer a rare look at North Korea’s nuclear program, which remains banned under several United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Uranium is a radioactive element that occurs naturally. In order to make nuclear fuel, raw uranium is subject to processes that produce a material with vastly increased concentrations of the isotope uranium-235.
Images show Kim walking between long rows of metal centrifuges, the machines that enrich uranium, although it is not known when the visit took place or where the facility is located.
North Korea is believed to have a number of sites for enriching uranium. Satellite imagery in recent years has shown construction activity at the main Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, including its uranium enrichment plant, suggesting possible expansion.
Accompanied by Hong Sung Mu, first vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Kim “stressed the need to further augment the number of centrifuges in order to exponentially increase the nuclear weapons for self-defence,” the report says.
Kim also sought to push forward the introduction of a new type of centrifuge, which would “further strengthen the foundation for producing weapon-grade nuclear materials.”
Estimates of the number of North Korean nuclear weapons are vague. A report published in July by the Federation of American Scientists found the country may have produced enough fissile material for 90 nuclear warheads, but that 50 or so are likely assembled.
In addition to his tour of the uranium enrichment facility, Kim oversaw the test-fire of a new 600mm multiple rocket launcher.
Write to Oliver Gray at Mining.com.au
