NKorea has plutonium for 10 nuclear bombs—SKorea

SEOUL: North Korea now has enough plutonium to make 10 nuclear bombs, South Korea said Wednesday, a week after leader Kim Jong-Un said it was close to test-launching an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The isolated communist state, tests and numerous missile launches, is thought to be planning a nuclear push in 2017 as it seeks to of hitting the US mainland.

Pyongyang is to realizing its full nuclear ambitions, but all agree it has made as leader from his father Kim Jong-Il who died in December 2011.

Seoul’s defense ministry said the kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium as of the end of 2016—enough to make about 10 weapons—up from 40 kilograms eight years earlier.

The North also has a “considerable” ability to produce weapons based on highly- enriched uranium, it said in a two-yearly white paper, but did not estimate weapons-grade uranium stocks, citing impenetrable secrecy in the state’s uranium programme.

US think tank the Institute for Science and International Security estimated in June that the North’s total nuclear arsenal was more than 21 bombs, up from 10-16 weapons in 2014, based on estimates of plutonium and uranium.

The North has boosted pluto once-mothballed nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, the defense ministry said.

- byon reactor in 2007 under an aidfor-disarmament accord, but began nuclear test in 2013.

The type of plutonium suitable for a nuclear bomb typically needs to be extracted from spent nuclear reactor fuel.

Kim Jong-Un said in a New Year’s speech that Pyongyang was in the - tercontinental ballistic missile of the kind that could threaten US territory.

The address drew a swift response from US president-elect Donald to halt Pyongyang in its tracks.