Pakistan Building New Reactor

The Washington Post is reporting that Pakistan may be building another plutonium reactor. This could complicate both relations with the United States and Pakistan’s rival India. There are no other uses for plutonium except for the use in nuclear weapons. This also comes as Pakistan is thought to have doubled its nuclear arsenal over the past decade to about one-hundred weapons.
Pakistani officials in Washington, asked about a fourth reactor at Khushab, declined to comment. A U.S. counterproliferation official who reviewed the images declined to comment on the ISIS analysis but said that U.S. intelligence agencies have been monitoring Khushab for years and are “aware of this facility.”
This could be a nervous development. The only reason to build this reactor is to build more nuclear weapons faster or use as a nuclear deterrent to India. Both would be a destabilization of the region.