‘Significant activity’ at North Korea nuclear lab spotted on satellite images

Satellite images suggest “significant activity” is taking place at a North Korean laboratory that could separate plutonium for nuclear weapons. The photos appear on 38 North, a US website that monitors sensitive sites in the country. The website says that during the past five weeks exhaust plumes have been seen two or three times at the radiochemical laboratory complex at Nyongbyon, which is North Korea’s known nuclear facility.

The plumes suggest that the operators of the reprocessing facility are heating their buildings, perhaps indicating that some significant activity is being undertaken, or will be in the near future.

Satellite imagery specialists William Mugford and Joseph Bermudez

The lab is where North Korea separates weapons-grade plutonium from waste from a nuclear reactor. The North announced in 2013 its intention to refurbish and restart nuclear facilities, including the reactor, which was shut down in 2007 under aid-for-disarmament negotiations it later withdrew from. The reactor has been the source of plutonium for the North’s small arsenal of weapons. The U.N. Security Council has imposed stiffer international sanctions on North Korea, and since the start last month of annual South Korea-U.S. military drills, the North has threatened nuclear strikes on Seoul and Washington.

North Korea nuclear