Ed Morrissey:
Happy Friday! Perhaps Kim Jong-un had something specific in mind for his test of an ICBM last week. A review of activity at key nuclear facilities in North Korea show more reprocessing cycles than previously known for nuclear fuel, raising the risk that the Kim regime has more plutonium-based weapons than the US assumes. Their production of highly enriched uranium might also be more significant too, according to an analysis seen exclusively by Reuters:
Thermal images of North Korea’s main nuclear site show Pyongyang may have reprocessed more plutonium than previously thought that can be used to enlarge its nuclear weapons stockpile, a U.S. think tank said on Friday.
The analysis by 38 North, a Washington-based North Korean monitoring project, was based on satellite images of the radiochemical laboratory at the Yongbyon nuclear plant from September until the end of June, amid rising international concerns over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
The think tank said images of the uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon could also indicate operation of centrifuges that could be used to increase North Korea’s stock of enriched uranium, its other source of bomb fuel. …
The images of the radiochemical laboratory showed there had been at least two reprocessing cycles not previously known aimed at producing “an undetermined amount of plutonium that can further increase North Korea’s nuclear weapons stockpile,” something that would worry U.S. officials who see Pyongyang as one of the world’s top security threats.
Well, they should be worried, and not just because they may have underestimated the size of Kim’s stockpiles. The basic problem is that Kim has any nuclear weapons at all, and now has a potential platform that could allow him to target US cities in Alaska and Washington. North Korea also has a potential submarine platform that could put even more states in range of a nuclear attack, although the subs themselves are not advanced enough to avoid detection by American attack subs — so far, anyway.
The increase in production points to another potential problem, which is proliferation. North Korea would love to sell nuclear weapons to marginal states and non-state actors if they could evade sanctions-enforcement efforts. (Sanctions have succeeded in choking off conventional-arms sales to some extent.) Iran would be an obvious customer, but then again, so might anyone who could pony up the hard cash the Kim regime needs. For some customers, just the nuclear material might be enough. If Pyongyang is producing it in excess of their ability to produce weapons, that might become a concern.
