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The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a United Nations nuclear watchdog, has released a report noting that North Korea has reactivated operations at a nuclear reactor capable of producing
plutonium
for nuclear weapons. A measure that would represent an attempt by the Kim Jong-un regime to expand its arsenal and that presents a new challenge on the foreign agenda of US President Joe Biden, touched by the crisis in Afghanistan and who has yet to resume the nuclear pact with Iran.
The IAEA, in a document it draws up each year on Pyongyang's nuclear program, says that in July they were able to observe how the North Koreans discharged cooling water at the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center, a complex north of the capital that is used to produce nuclear fuel.
Yongbyon also produces
highly enriched uranium,
the other key weapon-making fuel.
"Since the beginning of July 2021, there have been indications, including the discharge of cooling water, consistent with the operation of the reactor," says the agency report, which already in June assured that they had detected a possible reprocessing work to separate plutonium from spent jet fuel that could be used in nuclear weapons.
It is the first time that activity has been detected in the reactor since December 2018, five months after the summit between
Donald Trump
and Kim Jong-un in Singapore. A year later, when Kim and Trump met again in Hanoi, the North Korean leader offered to
dismantle
the Yongbyon compound in exchange for relief from US sanctions.
There was no agreement. The Americans rejected the offer because it only involved a partial surrender of their nuclear capabilities. According to Trump's former national security adviser,
John Bolton,
in his memoirs
, the
United States tried to include in the agreement the closure of other nuclear posts, as well as to dismantle the ballistic missiles. Pyongyang did not accept it. According to an estimate by South Korea's intelligence agency in 2018, its neighbor to the north has many other uranium enrichment facilities and could also have manufactured between 20 and 60 nuclear weapons.
"The continuation of the nuclear program is a clear violation of the pertinent resolutions of the Security Council of the UN and
is deeply worrying",
reads the report.
The IAEA has been unable to make observations on the ground since 2009, when its inspectors were expelled from North Korea by the Kim Jong-un regime.
But the agency, in recent years, has used the help of satellite images to carry out evaluations at the Yongbyon plant, a nuclear complex with a five-megawatt reactor.
According to the agency, from mid-February to early July, they also found
signs of activity
in the radiochemical laboratory that is located in the same complex as the reactor, where the plant's fuel rods are reprocessed. The IAEA director general, Rafael Grossi, assured a couple of months ago that the duration of the activity in the laboratory was consistent "with the time needed for a reprocessing campaign."
In early August, Reuters released another confidential UN Security Council report: North Korea had continued to develop its nuclear and ballistic missile programs during the first half of 2021 in
violation of international sanctions
and despite the worsening situation. economic of the country.
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