Nuclear experimentation

last updated 8 January 2015

Seoul

The U.N.’s atomic agency said this week that South Korea had admitted to producing near weapons grade uranium. The South Korean government said the uranium enrichment was a “one-time, isolated experiment” in 2000 by a group of rogue scientists acting outside the government. Only two-tenths of a gram of uranium was enriched, far less than the several kilograms required to make a small nuclear weapon. The South Koreans insisted that the revelation should not affect international efforts to make North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons program. “South Korea has never had, and does not have, enrichment or nuclear reprocessing programs, let alone a weaponization program,” said Foreign Ministry official Oh Joon.