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North Korea shows off new nuclear complex

Experts caution, however, that true hydrogen bombs are quite difficult to make, so it seems unlikely that North Korea would succeed in that step anytime soon.

North Koreans Unveil Vast New Plant for Nuclear Use, NYTimes.com, By DAVID E. SANGER  November 20, 2010 WASHINGTON — North Korea showed a visiting American nuclear scientist last week a vast new facility it secretly and rapidly built to enrich uranium, confronting the Obama administration with the prospect that the country is preparing to expand its nuclear arsenal or build a far more powerful type of atomic bomb……..

The scientist, Siegfried S. Hecker, a Stanford professor who previously directed the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in an interview that he had been “stunned” by the sophistication of the new plant, where he saw “hundreds and hundreds” of centrifuges that had just been installed, and that were operated from what he called “an ultra-modern control room.” The North Koreans claimed 2,000 centrifuges were already installed and running, he said.

American officials know that the plant did not exist in April 2009, when the last Americans and international inspectors were thrown out of the country. The speed with which it was built strongly suggests that the impoverished, isolated country, which tested its first nuclear device in 2006, had foreign help and evaded strict new United Nations Security Council sanctions imposed to punish its rejection of international controls……………The North’s current arsenal of 8 to 12 weapons are all based on plutonium, harvested from the waste of a reactor that has been partially dismantled. But uranium, enriched to bomb grade, can also be used to drastically increase the destructive power of a nuclear blast, and that is the main use of uranium in modern arsenals, including the warheads of the United States.Experts caution, however, that true hydrogen bombs are quite difficult to make, so it seems unlikely that North Korea would succeed in that step anytime soon.

North Korea Working With Uranium at Vast New Plant – NYTimes.com

November 21, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | North Korea, weapons and war | AUSTRALIA, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear technology, nuclear weapons, reactor