Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme is considered to be among the fastest growing in the world by Stockholm-based International Peace Research Institute, with the estimates of Islamabad possessing 90-110 nuclear warheads.
As enforcement efforts have tightened globally, Iran is using China as a platform to smuggle sanctioned goods for its controversial nuclear programme, according to a United States think-tank.
Pakistan has started construction of its fourth nuclear reactor at Khushab in Punjab province, signalling its ambitious effort to modernise and expand the nuclear arsenal.
Pakistan is going ahead with the construction of its third heavy nuclear reactor at the Khushab site at a much faster pace, a Washington-based think tank has said.
'Pakistan is likely supplementing or replacing its current uranium-based nuclear weapon arsenal with plutonium-based weapons which will be more destructive and deliverable,' said Institute for Science and International Security in response to a news article in Washington Post published on Pakistan's nuclear programme.
Iran has announced that it will produce uranium enriched to contain 20 per cent of the fissile isotope uranium-235, which is to refuel a reactor in Tehran that makes medical isotopes, after talks aimed at acquiring the fuel abroad stalled.Iran already makes 3.5 per cent low enriched uranium.
Playing down the significance of a new nuclear reactor being built by Pakistan, the Bush administration has said the new facility will produce far less plutonium than was reported by an independent think tank.
'The new reactor could simply be a replacement for the existing one in Khushab,' the report said.
India had enough weapons-grade plutonium by 2014 to possess an estimated arsenal of 75 to 125 nuclear weapons, according to a prominent US-based think-tank.
Pakistan's fourth heavy water reactor at Khushab nuclear site which allows it to build a larger number of miniaturised plutonium-based nuclear weapons now appears to be operational, a US think-tank has said.
Is North Korea really dismantling its nuclear programme? Rajaram Panda explains the many challenges to denuclearise the Korean Peninsula.
India has built two top-secret facilities in Karnataka to enrich uranium in pursuit of its hydrogen bomb dream.
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