A US-South Korea Nuclear Pact from AsiaSentinel

A stronger, more modern South Korea needs to modify its reprocessing spent fuel pact

 

A stronger, more modern South Korea needs to modify its reprocessing spent fuel pact

It appears, in the wake of US President Barack Obama's visit to South Korea last week that the US still has reservations about allowing Seoul to reprocess spent plutonium for industrial uses, partly because of Japan's concerns, having been the only country that has had a bomb dropped on it, and because of the dilemma of the outlaw nuclear program in North Korea.

The decades-old atomic agreement between South Korea and the US – signed when South Korea's economy was about the size of North Korea's today – is to expire in March 2014. Under the terms of the agreement, Seoul is barred from reprocessing used plutonium or enriching uranium – two processes that in addition to creating nuclear fuel can be used to produce fissile material for a weapon.

There is a basic perception in Seoul that the ROK-US nuclear energy agreement, outdated as it is, must be revised to embrace industrial demands of nuclear energy as well as an enhanced role for South Korea in the world. The pact was initially signed in 1972 and revised in 1974 in the height of the cold war.

But beyond the idea of increased demands for nuclear power, any consensus is unlikely to be made because of a sharp difference of perspectives over whether it's appropriate to allow Seoul to reprocess and enrich spent fuel which could make the development of nuclear weapons possible, if not impossible in theory. More at:

 

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