Images suggest Pyongyang may be making nuclear bomb fuel, monitor says

Activity detected at North Korea’s main nuclear site suggests Pyongyang may be reprocessing radioactive material into bomb fuel, a US monitor said yesterday.

The activity comes after a failed summit in February between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Their meeting ended abruptly without agreement on Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.

North Korea subsequently said it was considering its diplomacy with the US, and Mr Kim said last week he was open to talks with Mr Trump only if Washington came with the “proper attitude”.

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies said satellite imagery of the Yongbyon nuclear site from April 12 showed five railcars near its uranium enrichment area and radiochemistry laboratory.

“In the past, these specialised railcars appear to have been associated with the movement of radioactive material or reprocessing campaigns,” the Washington monitor said.

“The activity, along with [the railcars’] configurations, does not rule out possible involvement in such activity, either before or after a reprocessing campaign.”

Mr Trump and Mr Kim held their first summit in Singapore last June, where the North Korean leader signed a vaguely worded deal on the “denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula”.

But a failure to reach agreement at the second summit in Hanoi on paring back Pyongyang’s nuclear programme in exchange for the relaxation of sanctions has raised questions over the future of the wider process.

The US president walked away from a partial deal proposed by Mr Kim, which included an offer to dismantle the Yongbyon complex. Yongbyon is home to the country’s first nuclear reactor, and is the only known source of plutonium for its weapons programme.

Yongbyon is not thought to be the North’s only uranium enrichment facility and closing it would not signal an end to the country’s atomic programme.