NEW YORK – North Korea announced today that it would restart two facilities at its Yongbyon nuclear complex, a step that will allow the country to start producing weapons grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) with “immediate effect”. 

A spokesman for North Korea’s Atomic Energy Agency told a reporter from state media outlet KCNA that both a uranium enrichment plant and a 5MW graphite moderated plutonium research reactor located at Yongbyon would be “readjusted” and “restarted”.

A further statement published today by the KCNA said the latest development would allow North Korea to take “practical steps to bolster up the nuclear