North Korea, under the dictatorial leadership of Kim Jong Un, AKA “Little Rocket Man,” gave a rare peek at its highly secretive facility that is used to create weapons-grade uranium, as the state run media revealed on Friday that he visited the facility and demanded stronger efforts be made to “exponentially” increase the number of nuclear weapons for the country’s arsenal. Because that’s exactly what the rest of the world needs right now. North Korea with more nukes. What could possibly go wrong.
With someone as mentally unstable and just plain wicked as Kim Jong Un at the head of the country, how does anyone in South Korea, the southern neighbor of the dictatorship, ever truly relax? I would be paranoid around the clock that something awful was going to happen at the hands of this madman.
“It’s unclear whether the site is at North Korea’s main Yongbyon nuclear complex, but it’s the North’s first disclosure of a uranium-enrichment facility since it showed one at Yongbyon to visiting American scholars in 2010. While the latest unveiling is likely an attempt to apply more pressure on the U.S. and its allies, the images released by North Korean media of the area could provide outsiders with a valuable source of information for estimating the amount of nuclear ingredients that North Korea has produced,” The Associated Press reported. “During a visit to the Nuclear Weapons Institute and the facility producing weapons-grade nuclear materials, Kim expressed ‘great satisfaction repeatedly over the wonderful technical force of the nuclear power field’ held by North Korea, the official Korean Central News Agency reported. ”
The KCNA then stated that Kim took a stroll around the control room of the facility, along with a construction site that would help to expand its capacity for making nukes. The state media provided a set of photographs featuring Kim receiving a briefing from top scientists while going for a walk along a lengthy line of centrifuges. No mention of the date of the visit or where the facility is located were included in the report.
Kim placed strong emphasis on the need for further augmenting the number of centrifuges so they could “exponentially increase the nuclear weapons for self-defense,” which is a goal the dictator has mentioned time and time again over the course of recent years. Kim then issued an order for officials to move forward with the introduction of a new kind of centrifuge.
Kim said North Korea needs greater defense and preemptive attack capabilities because “anti-(North Korea) nuclear threats perpetrated by the U.S. imperialists-led vassal forces have become more undisguised and crossed the red line,” KCNA said. South Korea’s Unification Ministry strongly condemned North Korea’s push to boost its nuclear capability. A ministry statement said North Korea’s “illegal” pursuit of nuclear weapons in defiance of U.N. prohibitions is a serious threat to international peace. It said North Korea must realize it cannot win anything with its nuclear program.
North Korea first showed a uranium enrichment site in Yongbyon to the outside world in November 2010, when it allowed a visiting delegation of Stanford University scholars led by nuclear physicist Siegfried Hecker to tour its centrifuges. North Korean officials then reportedly told Hecker that 2,000 centrifuges were installed and running at Yongbyon. Satellite images in recent years have indicated North Korea was expanding a uranium enrichment plant at Yongbyon. Nuclear weapons can be built using either highly enriched uranium or plutonium, and North Korea has facilities to produce both at Yongbyon. Some U.S. and South Korean experts believe North Korea is covertly running at least one other uranium-enrichment plant.
As of this writing, we’re not exactly sure just how much weapons grade uranium North Korea possesses. Back in 2018, one of the high-ranking officials within the South Korean government told parliament that it’s estimated their northern counterpart has between 20-60 nukes in their arsenal, however, other experts say the numbers is probably north of 100. And, again, given the lose bolts in Kim’s head, that’s a terrifying thought.
“For analysts outside the country, the released images will provide a valuable source of information for rectifying our assumptions about how much material North Korea may have amassed to date,” Ankit Panda, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, went on to say.
“Overall, we should not assume that North Korea will be as constrained as it once was by fissile material limitations. This is especially true for highly enriched uranium, where North Korea is significantly less constrained in its ability to scale up than it is with plutonium,” Panda added.
The photos released last week show 1,000 centrifuges. If these devices are operated all year, they could potentially produce 44 to 55 pounds of highly enriched uranium, enough to make a single bomb. Kim’s new centrifuges could make five to ten times more than that.
"*" indicates required fields