South Korea agrees nuclear co-operation deal with US

South Korea and the US have agreed a new nuclear co-operation deal after five years of talks. But they failed to reach agreement on Seoul's demand to be allowed to enrich uranium and reprocess spent fuel.

The renegotiation of a soon-expiring 1973 deal has become one of the thorniest issues between Washington and Seoul, a key regional ally that has chafed at the US's refusal to allow it to follow others such as Tokyo in developing nuclear technology.

US ambassador Mark Lippert hailed the deal as "sophisticated and dynamic" after signing it on Wednesday. But while the agreement promised extensive consultation on South Korean enrichment and reprocessing, it left open the question of whether Seoul will ultimately be permitted to achieve these goals - seen as a sovereign right by some in South Korea but sitting uneasily with the Obama administration's efforts to tackle the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology.

The deal mandates the establishment of a joint committee to consider ways that Seoul could treat uranium to produce nuclear fuel at a low grade of enrichment, meaning it could not be used for weapons. South Korea has argued that the ability to produce its own fuel would help its energy and building firms to win nuclear plant projects abroad.

The two sides also agreed on future consultation through which they could jointly research "pyroprocessing", an emerging technology that yields plutonium mixed with other elements and therefore unsuitable for use in weapons development. During the lengthy negotiations, Seoul had asserted its need to reprocess spent fuel from its 21 nuclear power plants, arguing that storage facilities for the waste were fast approaching capacity.

"It is increasingly urgent for us to find a way to reprocess spent fuel," said Song Ki-chan at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute. "We can store spent fuel only until 2024 with the existing facilities [and] it's hard to build multiple storage facilities in a small nation."

South Korea's nuclear energy industry, which provides more than a quarter of the country's electricity, is heavily reliant on US co-operation, giving Washington an effective veto on Seoul's atomic policy.

The agreement came less than a year before the expiry of the existing pact, which had already been extended by two years as negotiators struggled for common ground.

Seoul's foreign ministry said the new agreement reflected "our advanced status", noting that it would be allowed to produce medical isotopes and export US nuclear material to selected third countries.

But the failure to resolve the questions on reprocessing and enrichment amounted to "pushing the can down the road", said James Kim, an analyst at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies. The conclusion of a multilateral nuclear deal with Iran, allowing Tehran to enrich uranium, would bolster South Korean pressure on this matter, he added.

South Korea's new deal is in the middle of the spectrum of US nuclear co-operation pacts with its Asian allies. Japan is entitled to pursue peaceful enrichment and reprocessing under a 1987 agreement, while the George W Bush administration signed a co-operation deal with India despite its development of nuclear weapons outside the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

However, Wednesday's agreement was far less restrictive than that signed in 2009 with the United Arab Emirates, which formally renounced enrichment and reprocessing - a deal dubbed the "gold standard" by US President Barack Obama.

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