SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea claims it is making rapid progress on work to enrich uranium and build a light-water nuclear-power plant. The news increases worries that the isolated regime is developing another way to make atomic weapons.
Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement today that the work on an experimental light-water reactor and the low-enriched uranium are “progressing apace.” The statement was carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
Last year, North Korea disclosed a uranium-enrichment facility that it says is meant to provide fuel for the reactor it is building at its main Yong byon nuclear complex. At low levels, uranium can be used in power reactors, but at higher levels, it can be used to make nuclear weapons.
