'Korea, US in final stage of nuclear deal'

By Kim Hyo-jin

Seoul and Washington are finalizing an envisioned nuclear agreement, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sunday.

“We are finalizing the negotiations to revise the nuclear deal in an advanced and mutually beneficial way,” said the foreign ministry in a press release. “But the timetable has yet to be fixed.”

The ministry rebuffed a report from Yonhap News Agency that said the two sides had virtually concluded an agreement that gives Seoul leeway to reprocess used nuclear fuel.

Yonhap said the U.S. had agreed to allow South Korea to reprocess spent nuclear fuel for the purpose of research and development (R&D).

The ministry refused to confirm any details of the agreement, saying negotiations were still ongoing.

Korea first signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States in 1972 in a bid to gain U.S. support for developing atomic energy.

To date, the U.S. has not consented to any reprocessing of used nuclear fuel in Korea. It has long approached the reprocessing issue with great caution because the technology used poses a nuclear proliferation risk.

In 2009, Washington added the “Gold Standard,” which prohibits both the enrichment and reprocessing of used nuclear fuel, in an accord with the United Arab Emirates. Since then, it has requested the same standard from Seoul. The government here has taken an opposing stance, stressing the accord should be revised reciprocally.

Under the existing Korea-U.S. nuclear agreement, Korea needs U.S. consent in order to carry out R&D with used nuclear fuel.

Amid increasing criticism on the provision that has not kept up with Korea’s developed technology, negotiations to revise the accord started in Oct. 2010, and are ongoing.

The accord was scheduled to expire in March 2014, but both nations postponed it by two years due to the need to narrow their differences.

During the talks, Seoul and Washington mainly discussed securing a stable supply of nuclear fuel and exports of nuclear power plants, and winning the right to deal with used nuclear fuel.

Negotiators reportedly reached an agreement on Seoul’s independent “pyroprocessing,” a reprocessing technology for spent fuel that does not make it weaponizable. Although the facility for it was established at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute in 2013, the U.S. has refused to allow Korea to operate it.