North Korea is stepping uranium production — but for power or nukes?

[jpak]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/north-korea-is-stepping-up-uranium-production--but-for-power-or-nukes/2015/08/13/0238f8f6-413f-11e5-9f53-d1e3ddfd0cda_story.html

TOKYO — North Korea has been stepping up its capacity to mine and mill uranium, new satellite imagery shows, raising fears that Kim Jong Un’s regime is trying to expand its stockpile of nuclear weapons.

The images show that a major mill that turns uranium ore into yellowcake, a first step towards enriching uranium, has recently been refurbished, says Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia non-proliferation program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

“Pyongyang appears to be modernizing a key facility associated with the production of uranium yellowcake,” Lewis wrote in a new report for 38 North,a Web site run by the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS. The facility is near a uranium mine outside Pyongsan, in the south of the country near the border with South Korea.

“This suggests that North Korea intends to mine and mill a significant amount of uranium that could serve as fuel for expanding its nuclear weapons stockpile,” Lewis wrote. However, he added that the fuel could also be used in light-water reactors, which generate electricity, which North Korea may be planning.

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[pampango]

1. More energy for the comfort of the North Korean people or more nukes to protect the dictator?

That's a tough one to figure out