North Korea may have made more nuclear bombs, but threat reduced: study

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

WORLD NEWS FEBRUARY 12, 2019 / 12:14 AM / UPDATED AN HOUR AGO

North Korea may have made more nuclear bombs, but threat reduced: study

David Brunnstrom
5 MIN READ

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea has continued to produce bomb fuel while in denuclearization talks with the United States and may have produced enough in the past year to add as many as seven nuclear weapons to its arsenal, according to a study released just weeks before a planned second summit between the North Korean leader and U.S. President Donald Trump.

However, the country’s freeze in nuclear and missile testing since 2017 mean that North Korea’s weapons program probably poses less of a threat than it did at the end of that year, the report by Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation found.

Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the U.S. Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico who is now at Stanford and was one of the report’s authors, told Reuters analysis of satellite imagery showed North Korea’s production of bomb fuel continued in 2018.

He said spent fuel generated from operation of the 5 megawatt reactor at its main nuclear plant at Yongbyon from 2016-18 appeared to have been reprocessed starting in May and would have produced an estimated 5-8 kg of weapons-grade plutonium.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-nuclear-study/north-korea-may-have-made-more-nuclear-bombs-but-threat-reduced-study-idUSKCN1Q10EL

[duforsure]

1. If they successfully tested their delivery system enough already,

For a missile to deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere within the USA, and have produced more bombs , and they've discovered more secret missile launching sites, this doesn't ad up that its less a threat. Especially when the president claims he's a friend of Kim's now. It sounds like more of another PR stunt to make himself look better , when in reality Kim's cleaning his clock with this, and russia and putin are behind Kim's actions knowing they'll keep trump in check , and doing nothing to stop him. Just an opinion, but trump's patterns doing this is very similar to things he's done in the past. We now are in greater danger from NK then we were when trump entered office.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. More nuclear bombs doesn't mean NK will actually use them.

They can be sold to Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other countries.

[defacto7]

3. and I don't think for a minute that they wouldn't

or haven't already.

[soryang]

4. "may have"

"When they ended missile testing, those things rolled backwards. So when I look at the whole spectrum, to me North Korea ... is less dangerous today than it was at the end of 2017, in spite of the fact that they may have made another five to seven weapons worth of nuclear material."