North Korea ‘has 20 nuclear warheads at most’, security think tank says
- The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute says the number was for ‘actual assembled warheads North Korea possesses’
- Organisation also says Russia has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal with 5,977 warheads, followed by US with 5,428 and China with 350; it says global nuclear arsenal ‘expected to grow over the coming decade’
North Korea now has 20 nuclear warheads at most, a leading international security think tank said on Monday, at a time when concerns are growing in the Asia-Pacific region that Pyongyang could conduct a nuclear test any time soon.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) gave the estimates for this year for “the number of actual assembled warheads North Korea possesses”.
Figures released in previous years referred to the number of warheads that it could build with the amount of fissile material (material that can sustain a nuclear fission chain reaction) it has produced.
The estimates for North Korea were added for the first time to the global inventory of nuclear warheads.
SIPRI’s annual report came as North Korea’s neighbouring countries Japan and South Korea and their ally the United States are bracing for a fresh nuclear test, which if carried out would be its first since September 2017.
Washington and Seoul have said Pyongyang has already completed preparations for a nuclear test at its Punggye-ri test site in the country’s northeast.
01:04
Russian and Chinese bombers flew near Japan during Quad summit in Tokyo