SEOUL, Sept 15 : North Korea said on Tuesday its main nuclear complex was operating and it was working to improve the "quality and quantity" of its weapons which it could use against the United States at "any time".
The comments follow a declaration by the North in 2013 vowing to restart all nuclear facilities, including the main nuclear reactor in Yongbyon that had been shuttered.
It marked the first acknowledgement since then that the plant, which has been the source of fissile material used in the country's atomic weapons program, is operational, experts said. "All the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon including the uranium enrichment plant and 5 MW graphite-moderated reactor were rearranged, changed or readjusted and they started normal operation," the state-run KCNA news agency said, quoting the director of its atomic agency. ?REUTERS