Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan on Thursday said the Korea-U.S. Atomic Energy Agreement should be revised "as soon as possible." Yu said Seoul will seek "concrete consultations in the direction of maximizing commercial gains from the supply of atomic raw materials and the handling of spent fuel."
Yu made the remarks in the press briefing after the U.S. said earlier this week it is against allowing South Korea to reprocess its own spent nuclear fuel. "We'll have to depend much more on atomic energy in coping with climate change in the future," Yu said. "What we are interested in about the atomic energy agreement between the two countries is setting a more concrete boundary of bilateral cooperation for the peaceful use of atomic energy."
The revision of the agreement, which expires in 2014, will reportedly begin in 2012.
Under the 1974 accord, South Korea is prohibited from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. South Korean politicians have recently called for revising the agreement following North Korea's second nuclear test.
| That is the admission that the call for expansion of nuclear agreements for 'peaceful purposes' has the concern about the Norks at the core, and that means they want to re-process fuel so that they can have some plutonium lying around just in case. If the Norks continue to rattle the saber, the SKors will start doing what preliminary work they can get away with so as to reprocess without asking our permission. |
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