Korea called for the United States to approve it undertaking "peaceful" enrichment of uranium and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, a government think tank said Monday, as little progress has been made in bilateral negotiations to revise the countries' nuclear accord.
Under a 1974 accord with the U.S., South Korea is banned from enriching uranium or reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. The allies have held five rounds of formal negotiations since 2010 to rewrite the bilateral nuclear cooperation treaty, which expires in 2014.
South Korea, a major nuclear energy developer, wants the U.S. to allow it to adopt a proliferation-resistant technology for enriching uranium and reprocessing spent atomic fuel from its 22 nuclear power plants, but Washington has been reluctant to do so.
"The U.S. nuclear cooperation policy towards restricting South Korea's peaceful enrichment and reprocessing is contradictory to the bilateral partnership built on mutual respect under the Korea-U.S. strategic alliance," said Jun Bong-geun, a senior professor at the Korean Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, in a report.
"Given the fact that South Korea has been actively working to strengthen a global non-proliferation regime, the U.S. needs to fully change its policy on nuclear cooperation with South Korea," Jun said in the report. The institute is affiliated with Seoul's foreign ministry.
In the face of growing nuclear waste stockpiles and its ambition to become a global power in the civilian nuclear industry, South Korea hopes to adopt the so-called pyroprocessing technology, which leaves separated plutonium, the main ingredient in making atomic bombs, mixed with other elements.
South Korea wants the U.S. to allow it to use the new technology because it has to deal with more than 10,000 tons of nuclear waste at storage facilities that are expected to reach capacity in 2016.
Some nonproliferation experts say pyroprocessing is not significantly different from reprocessing, and pyroprocessed plutonium could be quickly turned into weapons-grade material.
Reflecting Washington's firm stance to keep restricting South Korea from having uranium-enrichment technology, Gary Samore, arms control coordinator at the White House National Security Council, told reporters in July that there is no need for Seoul to enrich uranium.
Samore said South Korean can continue to buy enrichment services from the U.S., France and others rather than having its own uranium-enrichment technology.
"So there is no danger that Korean industry will not be able to get access to low enriched uranium," Samore said. (Yonhap)