North Korea: Nuclear programme 'more advanced' than Iran's
ultimo aggiornamento: 16 dicembre, ore 17:44
Despite international sanctions, North Korea has enough fuel to build six to 12 nuclear warheads. Although Iran's atomic programme alarms the west, Pyongyang's is considerably more advanced, Italian daily Il Foglio said on Thursday in an editorial.
Rome, 16 Dec. (AKI) - Despite international sanctions, North Korea has enough fuel to build six to 12 nuclear warheads. Although Iran's atomic programme alarms the west, Pyongyang's is considerably more advanced, Italian daily Il Foglio said on Thursday in an editorial.
The United States government has confirmed South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo's scoop: North Korea has more uranium enrichment plants than previously thought, and the technology it is using is "decidedly more advanced and efficient" than Iran's, Il Foglio reported.
Pyongyang has dug a tunnel also half a kilometre deep in the Punggye district in the northeast of the country, according to Chosun Ilbo and South Korean intelligence services, wrote Il Foglio.
On 12 November, the North Korean government invited an American nuclear expert, Siegfried Hecker from Stanford University to visit the Yongbyon nuclear plant.
Hecker said recently completed plant had 2,000 centrifuges to supply enriched uranium to a new reactor. He was "suprised" at the speed with which the North Koreans had been able to build an "ultramodern and clean" site.
On Tuesday, South Korean secret services confirmed there were "three or four" other sites, apart from the the one at Yongbyon, shown to Hecker.
US state department spokesman Philip Crowley concurred, stating: "There must be at least another plant."
North Korea knows it cannot use its atomic weapons as a tool of blackmail unless it wants the regime to be annihilated in a couple of hours.
But there are fears North Korea is eyeing the international nuclear market.
US president Barack Obama's advisor Gary Samore has said Washington must make sure that Pyongyang is not seeking to sell uranium to the Middle East.
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