Officials from South Korea and the United States are set to hold discussions this fall on expansion of the Asian nation's nuclear energy program, the Yonhap News Agency reported yesterday (see GSN, June 23).
The South is expected to ask Washington to ease the terms of a 1974 accord that bans Seoul from enriching uranium and reprocessing spent nuclear fuel -- processes closely associated with building nuclear weapons.
South Korea obtains 36 percent of its energy through nuclear power plants. Officials there say the country must expand its capability in order to increase its reactor exports and make its own energy production more environmentally friendly (Yonhap News Agency, July 8). Seoul also has a "huge stockpile of spent fuel" in need of reprocessing, one Foreign Ministry official told Agence France-Presse.
The nation has experimented with plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment in the past, but subsequently agreed not to operate plutonium or uranium enrichment sites (Agence France-Presse/NuclearPowerDaily.com, July 2).
Cho Hyun, Seoul's new energy envoy, talked with U.S. officials last month, and the two nations are scheduled to hold formal negotiations in October or November. Cho said South Korea would seek an updated deal by 2012. The current pact is set to expire in March 2014, Yonhap reported.
However, South Korea might run up against resistance from Washington. U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher told lawmakers recently that the administration was not likely to support lifting the restrictions.
As an alternative, Seoul has considered employing the "Pyro" process to recycle spent reactor fuel without reprocessing the material. "It is impossible to extract weapons-grade plutonium from the (Pyro) process," said South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has not weighed in on whether the Pyro process constitutes reprocessing or recycling, but the United States sees the technology involved as akin to reprocessing, according to a South Korean source (Yonhap, July 8).
Meanwhile, South Korea is preparing an electromagnetic pulse weapon it could employ to disable missile-guidance technology or other electronic systems, United Press International reported. The radius of the effect would be 330 feet, though defense officials hope to produce a bomb that could disable electronics within a radius of 3,300 feet, according to the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.
The presumed target of such a weapon would be North Korea. Seoul is also working on a $56 million system to protect military and strategic electronics against the electromagnetic effects of a North Korean nuclear strike (United Press International, July 8).