Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Wednesday North Korea has made a “very serious increase” to progress on its Yongbyon nuclear weapons complex, with expansions possibly including a new uranium enrichment facility.
Grossi made his comments at a filmed press conference in Seoul, South Korea, where he met with South Korean foreign minister Cho Hyun, according to X. He said the progress – including reprocessing units, the Yongbyon five-megawatt reactor and a light water reactor – add up to the capacity to produce a “few thousand warheads,” while its current nuclear program includes only a few dozen warheads.
The conjecture made by the U.N. international nuclear safety watchdog is backed up by satellite imagery released Monday by the U.S. think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The imagery shows the completion of a building “widely believed” to be a new uranium enrichment plant.
The building is 1,800 meters north of the centrifuge halls at Yongbyon, 480 meters northeast of the Radiochemistry laboratory, and complete with the generators, fuel storage tanks, cooling units and support buildings needed for an enrichment operation.
“Any production of enriched uranium would significantly increase the number of nuclear weapons available,” CSIS said.