Reprocessing the remaining spent fuel rods at Yongbyon would give it one more bomb.
Is it still your assessment that that cooling pond with the spent fuel rods is now empty?
However, one of its permanently-closed reactors on Long Island Sound did, and spent fuel rods remain on site.
What is more, Dr Filippone's results suggest that the spent fuel rods will continue to generate energy for 10-14 years.
But the dry casks holding spent fuel rods across the United States have not evolved along with their increasingly radioactive contents.
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That could have led to a loss of water and eventually to the exposure of the spent fuel rods to air, releasing radiation.
Spent fuel rods pose a potentially larger threat given that there are far more of them in pools at Fukushima than there are inside of the reactors themselves.
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But North Korea eventually used the spent fuel rods from its civilian nuclear reactors to develop weaponized plutonium, built secret nuclear facilities, plus it withdrew from the NPT.
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The fuel, called MOX, takes uranium from spent fuel rods and mixes it with plutonium, creating a less stable fuel, one that is potentially far more dangerous in a meltdown.
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It also expelled the weapons inspectors who were monitoring its plutonium-laden spent fuel rods and a reactor capable of producing more that can be reprocessed into fissile material for nuclear bombs.
Still, in a September letter to the United Nations, North Korea announced that Pyongyang's"reprocessing of spent fuel rods is at its final phase and extracted plutonium is being weaponized, " state media reported at the time.
But Dr Filippone's response is that there are huge numbers of spent fuel rods sitting around awaiting disposal in nuclear plants all over the world some 80, 000 tonnes in the United States alone and that it makes sense to extract as much energy from them as possible.
Tests to the power system of a reprocessing plant at Yongbyon suggest that North Korea may soon start extracting plutonium from a stock of 8, 000 spent fuel-rods.
Last month, American officials said sensors on North Korea's borders had detected elevated levels of krypton-85 (a gas emitted when plutonium is extracted from spent fuel-rods) which did not seem to be coming from Yongbyon.
That led the current North Korean president, Kim Jong Il, to order the reprocessing of the nation's spent nuclear fuel rods, to expel the inspectors and to explode two nuclear devices, destabilizing the region, Carter said.
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North Korea has since admitted to trying to make nuclear bombs by the plutonium route and claims to have reprocessed 8, 000 spent nuclear-fuel rods which would produce enough plutonium for about six atom bombs.
An alarm at reactor number three earlier revealed the system had stopped at one of the pools containing spent, but highly radioactive, fuel rods.
In early April, the cooling system at one of the pools containing spent - but highly radioactive - fuel rods in reactor number three broke down for about three hours.
The system cooling water which contained spent - but still highly radioactive - nuclear fuel rods failed and it took engineers some 30 hours to repair the damage.
All of the rods from the fuel core were put into the spent fuel pool above the reactor at that time.
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