U.S. Wary of South Korea’s Plan to Reuse Nuclear Fuel

By CHOE SANG-HUN

Published: July 13, 2010

SEOUL, South Korea — Overshadowed by the continuing tension over North Korea’s nuclear program, another nuclear dispute is emerging on the Korean Peninsula — this one between the United States and South Korea.

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Jim Young/Reuters

President Obama and President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea in April. This year the United States plans to renegotiate its nuclear treaty with South Korea, which is vexed by some limits.

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South Korea, which has no oil reserves, derives 40 percent of its electricity from nuclear reactors and is running out of space to store the highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel.

So the South Korean government wants to reprocess the used material — both to provide fuel for its next generation of fast-breeder reactors and to reduce its stored waste.

But South Korea is prohibited from such activities under a 1974 agreement with the United States. The plutonium that results from reprocessing spent fuel can power nuclear reactors — which South Korea insists is its only goal — but can also be used to make atomic bombs, as North Korea has done.

Washington wants to rein in the spread of reprocessing and enrichment as it grapples with North Korea and Iran over their nuclear programs. It retains some suspicions about South Korea, which briefly pursued nuclear weapons in the 1970s and experimented with reprocessing later. Allowing South Korea to reprocess or enrich the fuel, the United States fears, would set a precedent for other nations and give North Korea a pretext not to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

“The Americans say no to recycling, but don’t offer an alternative,” said Lee Un-chul, a nuclear scientist at Seoul National University. “They think we might change our minds and build nuclear weapons, depending on the situation with North Korea. In short, they don’t trust us. This is frustrating. We have to fight.”

That tug of war begins later this year when the two allies start renegotiating their nuclear treaty, which expires in 2014. South Korea is the site of the next nuclear security summit meeting, in 2012.

Analysts here say that any new deal that would permit Washington to continue blocking South Korea from recycling its fuel — even though it has agreed to let India, which is not even a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, do so — would hurt the national pride of the South Koreans, who have been loyal allies.

According to local news reports, the South Korean government also wants to acquire a uranium enrichment capacity to make the traditional fuel for reactors — another activity banned by the 1974 accord because enriched uranium can also be used for weapons.

South Korea’s ambition is tied to its drive to become a major exporter of nuclear reactors. In December, it won a $20 billion contract to build four nuclear plants in the United Arab Emirates.

Possible options, according to analysts in the United States and South Korea, include sending South Korea’s spent nuclear fuel to another country, for instance to France, for reprocessing, or constructing a recycling plant in South Korea and placing it under multinational control for security.

“It’s really our responsibility to work cooperatively with other governments to find ways that the benefits of the peaceful use of nuclear power can be obtained without leading to dangerous fuel-cycle activities proliferating,” said Daniel B. Poneman, the United States deputy secretary of energy, in Seoul last month.

South Korean engineers are championing a new technology called pyroprocessing, which the Bush administration endorsed. They call it “proliferation-resistant” because the plutonium produced through pyroprocessing is not pure and cannot be used directly for nuclear weapons.

Skeptics say the technology is far more dangerous than leaving the spent fuel intact in storage because a country with South Korea’s nuclear expertise could quickly turn pyroprocessed plutonium into weapons-usable material should it decide to break out of the nonproliferation treaty.

“The question of whether pyro is reprocessing is a political one, not a technical one,” Sharon Squassoni, director of the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in an e-mail message.

Miles A. Pomper, senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, said, “As far as the U.S. government is concerned, I believe this debate is over and pyroprocessing is not considered a different animal than reprocessing.”

South Korea also feels constrained by its 1992 joint declaration with North Korea, which banned both Koreas from enrichment or reprocessing.

Cheon Seong-whun, senior analyst at the government-run Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said that the South should jettison the agreement as a matter of principle because the North had violated it. But if it does, warned Lee Byong-chul, senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation, South Korea would come under “tremendous international suspicion and misunderstanding.”

Washington is wary of South Korea’s motives. Seoul embarked on its short-lived nuclear arms program in the early 1970s when President Richard M. Nixon reduced the number of American troops in South Korea to 40,000 from 60,000. In 2004, South Korearevealed to the International Atomic Energy Agency that its scientists had dabbled in reprocessing and enrichment without first informing the agency.

“We are not the South Korea of old days,” Mr. Cheon said. “We will never build nuclear weapons as long as the United States keeps its alliance with us. The Americans continue to look at us through the old lens.”

Ellen Tauscher, the United States under secretary of state for arms control and international security, told Congress last year that the Obama administration did not believe that advance consent to reprocess was “necessarily appropriate” for countries like South Korea.

But, Ms. Squassoni said, “It’s a tough call” because the Bush administration did give India advance consent.

“It is understandable why Seoul would be frustrated that India, a non-NPT state, would be given this deal while South Korea, a loyal U.S. ally and NPT member now in good standing, would face resistance from Washington,” said Mr. Pomper of the Monterey Institute.

South Koreans’ sensitivity over how their country is treated by the United States, whose recognition and respect often affect their national pride, is perhaps the thorniest issue negotiators from both sides face.

In the 1990s, a novel in which the two Koreas secretly build nuclear weapons together despite the C.I.A’s assassination of a Korean-American nuclear physicist who was assisting South Korea in this project became a runaway best seller. In the novel, the Koreas launch a nuclear missile at an uninhabited Japanese island as a warning when Japan tries to recolonize the Korean Peninsula.

Nuclear nationalism in South Korea is not entirely fictional.

After North Korea’s second nuclear test last year, calls for “nuclear sovereignty” resurfaced among some right-wing politicians. The administration of President Lee Myung-bak is keeping its distance from them as it prepares for the delicate talks with Washington.

“Nationalism and talk of nuclear sovereignty don’t help,” said Lee Byong-chul, the institute fellow. “It all comes down to whether the United States trusts South Korea. Seoul must convince Washington that it will never build nuclear weapons.”