North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been caught ramping up his country’s ability to build more nuclear bombs as the threat of WW3 grows.
A new enrichment facility at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex is under construction, according to experts analysing recent satellite imagery.
Pictures taken in April appears to show a new building that looks similar to North Korea’s Kangson enrichment facility.
It comes after International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general Rafael Grossi confirmed they were “monitoring the construction of a new building at Yongbyon which has dimensions and features similar to the Kangson enrichment plant.”
Though the IAEA never released official imagery, the given description appears to match what researchers have discovered.
“The dimensions and features, in our opinion, are enough to justify the IAEA drawing attention to the facility as a possible enrichment plant” they said.
Experts estimate the new facility is roughly the same size as the one at Kangson, which has nearly 4,000 centrifuges and has the ability to produce at least 73kg of uranium per year.
The Union of Concerned Scientists claim a simple gun-type bomb, similar to the one dropped on Hiroshima, would require 50kg to 60kg of highly enriched uranium.
While more advanced weapons will need significantly less, estimated to be around 6kg to 12kg.
It remains unclear how many bombs North Korea can make and what their arsenal consists of, but the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated last year that Pyongyang had built around 50 nuclear warheads with enough material to construct around 40 more.
Noth Korea unveiled the Yongbyon uranium enrichment site to visiting American scholars back in 2010, while Kim Jong Un visited last September where he lifted the lid on just how much the nuclear programme had expanded.
He then visited two nuclear weapon facilities in January, including what experts now believe was a fully-functional uranium site.