plutonium reactor

Twenty-six years later, in 2007, it did the same to Syria in Operation Outside the Box, destroying a secret plutonium reactor in the desert near Deir al-Zour just before it was activated.

“They didn’t want to see a plutonium reactor in their backyard,” says Richard Johnson, senior director for fuel cycle and verification at the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative.

In recent weeks it has also discussed rebuilding a plutonium reactor that was disabled under the agreement before it ever went into operation.

It will also take them a long time to amass and stockpile enough nuclear fuel to make a bomb since, under the JCPOA, it exported 98 percent of its low-enriched uranium to Russia, dismantled two-thirds of its centrifuges, and poured cement over the core of its plutonium reactor at Arak.

In Hanoi, the North Korean leader proposed to dismantle a single plutonium reactor and extend the halt in nuclear and missile testing, in return for Mr. Trump’s lifting all economic sanctions.