U.S. and South Korea Reach Revised Nuclear Deal

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/world/asia/us-and-south-korea-reach-revised-nuclear-deal.html

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SEOUL, South Korea — After four and a half years of low-key yet highly sensitive negotiations, the United States and South Korea announced a revised treaty on Wednesday that continues to deny — but not permanently rule out — South Korea the right to enrich uranium or reprocess spent nuclear fuel, even for peaceful purposes.

South Korea has been prevented from enriching uranium and reprocessing spent-fuel, technologies used by countries such as North Korea to make nuclear weapons, under a 1972 treaty in which the United States helped South Korea build its nascent nuclear energy industry.

The two governments started negotiations in 2010 to rewrite the treaty, which was originally set to expire in 2013. But their differences were too big to resolve, leading them to sign a separate deal to extend the expiration date.

South Korea insisted in the talks that it needed to enrich uranium to produce fuel for its fast-expanding nuclear energy industry. It also wanted to reprocess spent fuel to reduce its nuclear waste storage.

But the United States maintained that allowing South Korea to employ those technologies, even for peaceful purposes, would set a bad precedent and undermine its global efforts to discourage the spread of activities that can be used to produce weapons-usable nuclear materials.

Both sides announced on Wednesday that they had completed the bargaining, with the United States ambassador, Mark Lippert, and Park Ro-byug, the chief South Korean negotiator, initialing the text during a ceremony in Seoul, the South Korean capital. The agreement is subject to review by the United States Congress.

The new treaty does not allow South Korea to enrich uranium or reprocess spent fuel anytime soon. But it does not commit South Korea to legally renounce these techniques either.

Instead, it leaves open the possibility that South Korea could enrich uranium for civil nuclear energy “in the future through consultations with the United States.” In the meantime, Washington promised to help secure a supply of nuclear fuel for South Korean atomic power plants, Seoul said in a news release.

The deal also created the option for South Korea to have its spent fuel reprocessed abroad in countries that both Seoul and Washington believed posed no proliferation risk.

The United States also promised to help South Korea find new nuclear waste management options that would be economically viable and more proliferation-resistant. As part of such efforts, South Korea said its scientists would be allowed to do early experiments on a kind of nuclear reprocessing known as pyroprocessing.

The new treaty also establishes a high-level committee that will assess the implementation of the treaty.

The United States hailed the treaty as reaffirming “the two governments’ shared commitment to nonproliferation.” Ju Chul-ki, senior secretary for foreign affairs for President Park Geun-hye of South Korea, said the agreement reflected his country’s status as a major player in civil nuclear energy.

Lee Byong-chul, a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul, said the deal was beneficial for both countries, though it reminded South Koreans of the constraints placed upon their country’s nuclear industry.

South Korea is the world’s fifth-largest nuclear energy producer, with 23 reactors providing 36 percent of the country’s electricity needs. It has also presented nuclear power plants as one of its new export items. (The country is building four reactors for the United Arab Emirates.)

Yet the country currently has to import all of its enriched uranium fuel because of the obligations imposed under the treaty with the United States. After decades of running nuclear power plants, nuclear waste has also become a growing concern. In this small, densely populated country with an increasingly vociferous environmental movement, building a new, central repository for its spent nuclear fuel has become a huge headache for the government.