SEOUL
\nNorth Korea is believed to possess up to two tonnes of highly enriched uranium, South Korea\u2019s unification minister said Thursday. The North has long been known to hold a \u201csignificant\u201d amount of highly enriched uranium, the key material used to produce nuclear warheads, according to South Korea\u2019s defence ministry.
\nBut in a rare public confirmation, South Korea\u2019s unification minister said that \u201cintelligence agencies estimate Pyongyang\u2019s stockpile of highly enriched uranium\u2013more than 90 percent pur
\n\u201cEven at this very hour, North Korea\u2019s uranium centrifuges are operating at four sites,\u201d Chung Dong-young told reporters.
\n\u201cOnly five to six kg of plutonium is enough to build a single nuclear bomb,\u201d said Chung, adding that 2,000 kg of highly enriched uranium, which could be reserved solely for plutonium production, would be \u201cenough to make an enormous number of nuclear weapons\u201d. Chung said that \u201cstopping North Korea\u2019s nuclear development is an urgent matter\u201d, but argued that sanctions will not be effective and that the only solution lies in a summit between Pyongyang and Washington.
\nNorth Korean leader Kim Jong Un said this week that he was open to US talks provided he can keep his nuclear arsenal. North Korea, which conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 and is under rafts of UN sanctions for its banned weapons programmes, has never publicly disclosed details of its uranium enrichment facility until last September.
\nThe country is believed to operate multiple uranium enrichment facilities, Seoul\u2019s spy agency has said, including one at its Yongbyon nuclear site, which Pyongyang purportedly decommissioned after talks \u2014 although it later reactivated the facility in 2021. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEOUL North Korea is believed to possess up to two tonnes of highly enriched uranium, South Korea\u2019s unification minister said Thursday. The North has long been known to hold a \u201csignificant\u201d amount of highly enriched uranium, the key material used to produce nuclear warheads, according to South Korea\u2019s defence ministry. But in a rare public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505059,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-505047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n