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Report: North Korea may have made more nuclear bombs, but threat reduced

While the country has suspended nuclear and missile testing since 2017, it has continued to produce bomb fuel, expanding its number of nuclear weapons by between 5-7 and bringing the total to as many as 37. These numbers come from a report out of the Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and differ from U.S. government estimates. In 2018, the DIA estimated around 50 nuclear warheads, with most other estimates falling between 20 and 60. Fortunately, the lack of testing has reduced the overall risk in spite of the additional weapons, according to the Stanford report. “They have continued the machinery to turn out plutonium and highly enriched uranium, but it also depends on weaponization – the design, build and test and then the delivery,” stated one of the report authors. “When they ended missile testing, those things rolled backwards. So when I look at the whole spectrum, to me North Korea…is less dangerous today than it was at the end of 2017, in spite of the fact that they may have made another 5-7 weapons worth of nuclear material.” 

Source: North Korea may have made more nuclear bombs, but threat reduced: study | Reuters

OODA Analyst

OODA Analyst
