North Korea Nuclear Weapons

Category: Weapons of Mass Destruction

Daryl Correa and Stephen Huang

What they have and when they got them: North Korea created the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, containing two reactors, both of them small power stations using Magnox techniques. The smaller(5MWe) was completed in 1986 and has since produced possibly 8,000 spent fuel elements. Construction of the larger plant (50MWe) commenced in 1984. On October 9, 2006, the North Korean government issued an announcement that it had successfully conducted a nuclear test for the first time.

Size of Arsenal: Not really known but by 1994, the United States believed that North Korea had enough reprocessed plutonium to produce about 10 bombs with the amount of plutonium increasing.

NonProliferation treaty: North Korea was a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty up until its withdrawal in 2003, which was a result of the the failure of the United States to fulfill its end of the Agreed Framework.

Test Ban Treaty: North Korea did not sign.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_nuclear_weapons_program#Nuclear_weapons