IAEA Reports & Diplomatic Communication

Application of Safeguards in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for August 19, 2016

August 22, 2016

View PDF: Application of Safeguards in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for August 19, 2016

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest report on the application of safeguards in the DPRK.

Commentary by David Albright:

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in its August 19, 2016 report supports in an important manner the assessment that North Korea has separated more plutonium and enriched more uranium, likely for nuclear weapons.

It is significant that the IAEA writes that North Korea could have unloaded the fuel from the 5 megawatt-electric (MWe) reactor late last year and processed it to separate plutonium in the Radiochemical Laboratory during the first half of this year. In this case, we have estimated that North Korea could have produced and separated an additional 5.5-8 kilograms of weapon-grade plutonium. This amount of plutonium is enough for two to four nuclear weapons, assuming 2-4 kilograms of weapon-grade plutonium per weapon, or a central estimate of 3 additional nuclear weapons based on plutonium. Our report describing these estimates and ones for highly enriched uranium (HEU) production at Yongbyon can be found here.

In total, including weapon-grade uranium as well, we estimate North Korea has about 13-21 nuclear weapons as of this summer. This estimate does not include the effect of additional weapon-grade uranium production during the last 18 months that could have occurred at a second enrichment plant outside Yongbyon. If this second plant was included, the upper bound of 21 would increase by a few nuclear weapons.

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