Weapons experts said North Korea could have sufficient amount of main ingredient in making 6 nuclear bombs next year.
Uranium is a main ingredient in making a nuclear bomb and North Korea keeps on working for the production of this element.
The new assessment of the weapons experts show that North Korea has abundant uranium reserves.
Besides, they have been working covertly for well over a decade on a project to enrich the material to weapons-grade level in order to make many nuclear bombs.
To recall, the North has evaded a decade of sanctions implemented by the UN to develop the uranium enrichment process.
This enables Pyongyang to run an effectively self-sufficient nuclear program that is capable of producing around six nuclear bombs a year, they said.
These experts further revealed that North Korea will have enough material enough for about 20 nuclear bombs by the end of this year, with ramped-up uranium enrichment facilities and an existing stockpile of plutonium.
The true nuclear capability of North Korea which is considered an isolated and secretive state is impossible to verify. But after Pyongyang conducted its fifth and most powerful nuclear test last week and, it appears that they have no shortage of material to test with.
After the nuclear test, South Korea said the North was preparing for another one.
According to Siegfried Hecker, a leading expert on the North’s nuclear program, that project of the North, believed to have been expanded significantly, is likely the source of up to 150 kilograms (330 pounds) of highly enriched uranium a year.
He who wrote this in a report on the 38 North website of Johns Hopkins University in Washington published on Monday.
Hecker toured the North’s main Yongbyon nuclear facility in 2010.
That quantity he added is enough for roughly six nuclear bombs.
Added to an estimated 32- to 54 kilogram plutonium stockpile, the North will have sufficient fissile material for about 20 bombs by the end of 2016, Hecker said.
The Defence Minister of South Korea, Han Min-koo, estimated the North’s plutonium stockpile at about 40 kilograms this year.
Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies also said North Korea had an unconstrained source of fissile material, both plutonium from the Yongbyon reactor and highly-enriched uranium from at least one and probably two sites.
North Korea said its latest test proved it was capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a medium-range ballistic missile.