PYONGYANG, April 2 (Itar-Tass) – North Korea will resume the work of all nuclear facilities located in the Yongbyon nuclear research centre, an official of the DPRK General Department of Atomic Energy stated on Tuesday. He named among them the uranium enrichment plant and a graphite reactor with the capacity of 5 MW, which had been shut down in October 2007 under the agreement reached at the six-party talks on the nuclear issue of the Korean Peninsula.
This measure, the statement says, is taken “in line with the new strategic course of the party” that was approved at the plenary meeting of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) on Sunday of. The strategic course envisages the “simultaneous economic reconstruction and the quality and quantity strengthening of the military nuclear force for self-defence.”
The department official admitted that that the country faces a “difficult task to eliminate the chronic shortage of electricity by building the nuclear power industry with reliance on the country’s own resources and to simultaneously strengthen the nuclear deterrence forces.”