S. Korea, U.S. should adopt 'pyroprocessing' in new nuclear pact: expert

By Lee Chi-dong
SEOUL, Dec. 18 (Yonhap) -- The United States may be unwilling to accept South
Korea's request for the right to reprocess spent fuel because it could further
complicate global efforts to denuclearize North Korea, a U.S. expert's report
released Friday said.
The allies are facing the daunting task of replacing their 1974 nuclear agreement
with a new one in 2014. The existing pact bans South Korea, the world's
sixth-largest consumer of nuclear energy, from enriching uranium or reprocessing
spent fuel.
However, South Korean officials say their nation, which produces 36 percent of
its energy at 20 nuclear power plants, needs to enlarge its non-military nuclear
activity. They want to export reactors, which they argue would help counter
climate change. South Korea has more than 10,000 tons of nuclear waste in storage
and is likely to reach capacity in 2016, according to the officials. South Korea
and the U.S. plan to start negotiations on the new pact in the near future.
"The United States will find it difficult to consent to any kind of reprocessing
on the Korean Peninsula, particularly if Washington perceives that such a
decision would jeopardize the satisfactory resolution of the nuclear issue in
North Korea, including a nuclear-weapons-free Korean Peninsula," Fred McGoldrick
said in the report. He has decades of experience in nuclear non-proliferation and
international nuclear policy at the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Department
of State, where he negotiated peaceful nuclear cooperation agreements.
He presented some options for compromise, including transferring some or all
spent fuel of U.S. origin abroad for reprocessing or allowing a new technique
called "pyroprocessing."
While South Korea views pyroprocessing as a process to "recycle" -- not reprocess
-- used fuel, the International Atomic Energy Agency has yet to conclude whether
the technology, which has not yet been commercialized, is reprocessing or
recycling.
"South Korea's development of nuclear energy production is a success story built
on the foundations of past successful U.S.-ROK nuclear cooperation," said Scott
Snyder, Director of the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy in Washington. "For this
reason, the efforts of the McGoldrick report to identify solutions to the most
pressing concerns in U.S.-ROK (South Korea) negotiations will be helpful in
addressing issues that might otherwise become sticking points in the bilateral
negotiations."
lcd@yna.co.kr
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