By Chung Min-uck
Seoul and Washington have agreed to extend an accord that prevents South Korea from producing its own nuclear fuel for two more years until March 2016, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday.
The two governments jointly announced the decision on the renewal of the bilateral Atomic Energy Agreement, following the latest round of talks held in Washington last week.
“We’ve agreed to extend talks for the current nuclear agreement by two years,” said ministry spokesman Cho Tai-young in a press briefing. “Talks will take place every three months and the next round will be due in June.”
The extension of the deadline, the spokesman said, is likely to give Seoul an edge in attaining what it wants.
The allies have been negotiating to revise the 1974 agreement which bans South Korea from enriching uranium and reprocessing spent fuel originating from the United States.
The U.S. has been reluctant to grant Seoul this request due to nuclear proliferation concerns.
“There has been progress in some areas despite Washington’s solid non-proliferation agenda and concerns regarding the latest nuclear provocation by North Korea,” said a foreign ministry official without elaborating on the details.
Seoul is reportedly aiming to include a provision that allows it to enrich uranium in the renewed pact.
Concerning spent fuel, South Korea is to push for the adoption of the so-called pyro-processing technology which does not separate plutonium during the reprocessing stage. Plutonium is one of the main ingredients in making nuclear weapons.
Cho said the two sides made “meaningful progress” in the negotiations in terms of “management of spent nuclear fuel, stable supply of nuclear fuel and Korea’s exports of nuclear reactors.”
However, he said, Seoul and Washington still decided to extend the accord because much more “technical and specific issues remain to be resolved.”
South Korea runs 23 reactors and relies on nuclear energy for nearly 40 percent of its electricity needs.
It also has to deal with more than 10,000 tons of nuclear waste at storage facilities that are expected to reach capacity by 2016.
Despite the restrictions, Seoul ranks as the world’s fifth largest nuclear energy producer.
Time has been running short for the allies because the two sides must conclude negotiations by this summer for a revised accord to be approved by the U.S. Congress before the current accord expires in March next year.
“The Korean government will continue to make efforts to revise the accord in an advanced and mutually beneficial manner,” Cho said.