North Korea said on Tuesday it intended to restart a mothballed nuclear reactor to feed its nuclear arms program and hinted it may begin openly enriching weapons-grade uranium.

North Korea said on Tuesday it intended to restart a mothballed nuclear reactor to feed its nuclear arms program and hinted it may begin openly enriching weapons-grade uranium.

A government nuclear energy spokesman said the move would involve "readjusting and restarting" all facilities at the North's Yongbyon nuclear complex, including a uranium enrichment plant and a five megawatt reactor.

This was being done with a view to "bolstering the nuclear armed force both in quality and quantity" as well as solving "acute" electricity shortages, the spokesman was quoted as saying by the official KCNA agency.

The North shut down the Yongbyon reactor in July 2007 under a six-nation aid-for-disarmament accord. The following summer it destroyed the cooling tower.

The reactor was the sole source of plutonium for the North's nuclear program.
North Korea revealed it was enriching uranium in Yongbyon in 2010 when it allowed foreign experts to visit the centrifuge facility there.

It insisted at the time that it was solely low-level enrichment for energy purposes.
The mention of "readjustment" by the energy spokesman will fuel concerns that it will be transformed, if indeed it has not been already, into a facility for producing weapons-grade uranium.