DailyMail.co.uk  |  September 14, 2016

North Korea Holds Mass Rally To Celebrate Nuclear Missile Test Amid Fears Kim Jong-Un Has Enough Uranium To Make 20 Nukes THIS YEAR

• North Korea has staged a mass rally in Pyongyang to celebrate carrying out its fifth nuclear missile test

• Epic gathering saw thousands clapping in unison and saluting leaders who were watching from balcony

• Comes as experts warned Kim Jong-Un has enough uranium to make 20 nuclear bombs by the end of 2016

By Julian Robinson

The epic gathering, in the heart of the secretive nation's capital Pyongyang, featured tens of thousands of civilians and military personnel gazing up at their leaders who were watching on from a balcony.

Footage shows the vast crowd started clapping in unison and making bizarre synchronised arm movements as they celebrated North Korea's fifth and largest-ever nuclear test conducted last week.

The rally was staged as it emerged that dictator Kim Jong Un has ensured North Korea will have enough material for about 20 nuclear bombs by the end of this year - with ramped-up uranium enrichment facilities and an existing stockpile of plutonium.

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N Korea has staged a mass rally to celebrate carrying out its fifth nuclear missile test amid fears Kim Jong-Un has enough uranium to make 20 similar bombs in the next three months.
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Epic gathering, in the heart of the secretive nation's capital Pyongyang, featured tens of thousands of civilians & military personnel gazing up at their leaders who were watching on from a balcony.
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Assessments by weapons experts say the North has evaded a decade of UN sanctions to develop the uranium enrichment process, enabling it to run an effectively self-sufficient nuclear programme that is capable of producing around six nuclear bombs a year.

Meanwhile, North Korea today accused the United States of pushing the Korean Peninsula to 'the point of explosion' after it dispatched two huge bombers in a show of force against Pyongyang.

The supersonic B-1B Lancers flew over South Korea Tuesday as Washington vowed its 'unshakeable commitment' to defend its allies in the region following the North's fifth nuclear test.

Washington called the demonstration 'just one example of the full range of military capabilities'. It took similar military actions following previous atomic tests.

North Korea labelled the flyover by the 'infamous' nuclear bombers as Washington's attempt to seek 'an opportunity of mounting a preemptive nuclear attack,' referring to US plans to deploy further strategic assets to the peninsula.

Support: A rally celebrating the success of a recent nuclear test is held in Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang yesterday.
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Footage shows vast crowd started clapping in unison & making bizarre synchronised arm movements as they celebrated N Korea's 5th & largest-ever nuclear test conducted last week.
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The rally was staged as it emerged that dictator Kim Jong Un has ensured North Korea will have enough material for about 20 nuclear bombs by the end of this year - with ramped-up uranium enrichment facilities and an existing stockpile of plutonium.
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'These extremely reckless provocations of the US imperialist warmongers are pushing the situation on the Korean peninsula to the point of explosion hour by hour,' the state-run KCNA news agency said.

It warned that the North Korean army was fully armed with 'all means for military counteraction' to strike back at any enemy attack in 'a single blow'.

Washington is planning to send the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the USS Ronald Reagan and the Japan-based Carrier Strike Group Five to South Korean waters next month for a joint naval exercise, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency. 

South Korea hosts 28,000 US troops as the two Koreas technically remain at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice instead of a peace treaty.

The bombers' flight came after the North on Friday carried out what it described as a 'nuclear warhead test' and vowed to take further measures to increase its nuclear strike force 'in quality and in quantity'.  

The true nuclear capability of the isolated and secretive state is impossible to verify. 

But after Pyongyang conducted its fifth and most powerful nuclear test last week and, according to South Korea, was preparing for another, it appears to have no shortage of material to test with.

N. Korea today accused the United States of pushing the Korean Peninsula to 'the point of explosion' after it dispatched two huge bombers in a show of force against Pyongyang.
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Military leaders stood on a balcony and watched out the massive rally held in the centre of N. Korea's capital Pyongyang.
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After Pyongyang conducted its fifth and most powerful nuclear test last week and, according to S. Korea, was preparing for another, it appears to have no shortage of material to test with.
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Pictures show lines of supporters clapping in unison at the rally. The true nuclear capability of the isolated and secretive state is impossible to verify.
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North Korea has an abundance of uranium reserves and has been working covertly for well over a decade on a project to enrich the material to weapons-grade level, experts have said.

That quantity is enough for roughly six nuclear bombs, Hecker, who toured the North's main Yongbyon nuclear facility in 2010, wrote in a report on the 38 North website of Johns Hopkins University in Washington published on Monday.

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.

North Korea said its latest test proved it was capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a medium-range ballistic missile, but its claims to be able to miniaturise a nuclear device have never been independently verified.

Assessments of the North's plutonium stockpile are generally consistent and believed to be accurate because experts and governments can estimate plutonium production levels from telltale signs of reactor operation in satellite imagery.

South Korean Defence Minister Han Min-koo this year estimated the North's plutonium stockpile at about 40 kilogrammes.

Thousands of military recruits clapped in unison as they lined up for a huge rally in celebration of the country's nuclear weapons test.
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Under orders: Civilians were also brought in to create a huge crowd in Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang.
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Warning: US B-1 bomber, center, flies over Osan Air Base with U.S. jets in Pyeongtaek, South Korea on Tuesday.
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But Hecker, a former director of the US Los Alamos National Laboratory, where nuclear weapons have been designed, has called North Korea's uranium enrichment programme 'their new nuclear wildcard,' because Western experts do not know how advanced it is. 

Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies 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.

'The primary constraint on its programme is gone,' Lewis said. Weapons-grade plutonium has to be extracted from spent fuel taken out of reactors and then reprocessed, and therefore would be limited in quantity. A uranium enrichment programme greatly boosts production of material for weapons.

The known history of the uranium enrichment project dates to 2003, when the North was confronted by the United States with evidence of a clandestine programme to build a facility to enrich uranium with the help of Pakistan.

N. Korea has an abundance of uranium reserves and Kim Jong Un (pictured) has ordered covert work on a project to enrich the material to weapons-grade level, experts have said.
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North Korea said its latest test proved it was capable of mounting a nuclear warhead on a medium-range ballistic missile, but its claims to be able to miniaturise a nuclear device have never been independently verified.
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Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in his memoirs that A.Q. Khan, the father of that country's nuclear programme, transferred two dozen centrifuges to the North and some technical expertise around 1999.

'It was also clear that the suspected Pakistani connection had taken place, as the centrifuge design resembled Pakistan's P-2 centrifuge,' Hecker said in a report in May.

Hecker reported being shown around a two-story building in the Yongbyon complex in November 2010 that a North Korean engineer said contained 2,000 centrifuges and a control room Hecker called 'astonishingly modern.'

By 2009, the North had likely acquired the technology to be able to expand the uranium project indigenously, Joshua Pollack, editor of the US-based Nonproliferation Review, has said.

North Korea has not explicitly admitted to operating the centrifuges to produce weapons-enriched uranium, instead claiming they were intended to generate fuel for a light water reactor it was going to build.

Despite sanctions, by now North Korea is probably largely self-sufficient in operating its nuclear programme, although it may still struggle to produce some material and items, Lewis said.

'While we saw this work in Iran, over time countries can adjust to sanctions,' he said.

Original article here.