Why does the U.S. refuse to grant the enrichment and reprocessing technologies to the ROK, its longtime economic and security ally?
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There is no question that South Korea has a "sovereign right" to indigenously develop enrichment and reprocessing technologies. However, one has to remember that South Korea chose to buy the U.S. nuclear technology and, in return for that, it had to make a certain kind of contractual promises with the U.S.
In terms of why U.S. does not want to grant such technologies - enrichment and pyroprocessing - the general policy of the U.S. is preventing the spread of proliferation-prone technology. I think the U.S. made a mistake when it committed Japan to have such technologies since it cannot be undone.
For what it's worth, the U.S. did not say point blank no to South Korea from pyroprocessing. The US-ROK has a ten-year study to assess if the pyroprocessing is economically and technologically feasible and proliferation resistant. There will be a talk between the two countries once the ten-year study is completed as well. So again, I would not accept that the U.S. shut the door for South Korea. The U.S. just wants to make sure that pyroprocessing makes sense for South Korea.
Why do you think pyroprocessing is potential proliferation risk?
Because it involves the production of plutonium. That plutonium is not completely a pure plutonium, but it is plutonium with little effort that can be transformed into weapon-grade plutonium.
The new 123 agreement opened the door to a ROK pathway to enrich and reprocess nuclear material in the future by stating the NPT’s “inalienable right” clause in the preamble. Do you think this signals a fundamental change of US nonproliferation policy?
No, I don't. The U.S. has never said point blank no to South Korea for pyroprocessing. The Bush administration was always willing to discuss this possibility with South Korea. The U.S. has never said yes, and the U.S. has never said point blank no. The U.S. has never said you can do it now, but it also has never said you could never do it in the future. Therefore, I actually think that the new 123 agreement [between the US and ROK] has strong policy continuity with the previous one.
Instead of granting the right to reprocessing technology, the new 123 agreement allows the ROK an option to transfer the SNF to an approved 3rd party country. Is the United States willing to store the ROK’s SNF? If not the U.S., then who?
Reprocessing still creates a large quantity of nuclear wastes. Even if South Korea goes down the pyroprocessing route, it still has to deal with nuclear wastes. South Korean nuclear community ignores the challenges of dealing with nuclear wastes associated with pyroprocessing and its facility.
In addition, even if the U.S. says yes to the pyroprocessing today, we are still looking decades into the future before South Korea builds the pyroprocessing plants and fast reactor. South Korea does not have a prototype fast reactor, let alone a commercial fast reactor. Pyroprocessing has not even left a lab scale, let alone industrial scale. So even if the U.S. says yes today, it is decades before the pyroprocessing can deal with nuclear wastes. Maybe, pyroprocessing is a long-term solution, but South Korean nuclear community has been misleading the public that pyroprocessing is a solution for nuclear waste for near future.
South Korean nuclear establishment has talked about cooling pond at nuclear reactors being overwhelmed with nuclear wastes. It is true and is a real problem. But something [pyroprocessing] that can be helpful decades from now cannot solve the problem now. So the fundamental point here is, South Korea needs a solution for its spent fuel regardless of pursuing pyroprocessing or not. South Korea needs something in few years, not in next few decades.
What could be a solution for South Korea regarding its nuclear spent fuel?
Well, South Korea has to convince a local community to accept a dry-cask storage. There is no other solutions. It is what the U.S. does. Dry-cask storage is the only feasible solution.
[Furthermore,] I strongly support the principle of the U.S. taking other countries' nuclear spent fuel. I would very much like the U.S. to take South Korea and other countries' spent nuclear fuel in exchange of payment. Politically, that is not possible and is a great shame, and I think it is a problem for nonproliferation.
If the U.S. cannot accept spent nuclear fuel (SNF), then who else can do it?
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Essentially, no one can. The only country that will accept SNF and will store is Russia. However, Russia only accepts SNF that it supplied. In theory, if South Korea had a fuel supply contract with Russia, then Russia would be willing to take back SNF. France will take SNF and reprocess it, but it will ship the waste back. So that does not really help very much with South Korea since it still has to deal with the waste, and the U.S. would not be happy with separated plutonium being returned to South Korea. So fundamentally, I would very much like if there is an international market dealing with SNF. I think it is a very good idea.
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The United States allowed Japan to enrich and reprocess on the basis that it has maintained a good “nonproliferation track record. ”How does the U.S. define a country's "nonproliferation track record?"
Certainly, there is some inconsistency from the U.S. in this regard. I do not believe that the U.S. should have given a right to enrich and reprocess to Japan. That said, the U.S. has no single definition of country's nonproliferation track record.
However, if there is a concrete difference between Japan and South Korea. About 10 years ago, South Korea was found to have violated safeguard of the IAEA. South Korean nuclear industry dismissed it as not serious. That is not true. South Korea's violation of safeguard was extremely serious matter, and South Korea should have been found in non-compliance by IAEA Board of Governance. I was not in favor of sanctioning or punishing South Korea but the U.S. should have called non-compliance as non-compliance.
Therefore, I believe that the single most important aspect of "nonproliferation track record" definition is whether a country followed safeguard of the IAEA. Japan has done that very safely for 50 years. South Korea has not. That is a very concrete difference between the two countries.
How does the United States reconcile Japan’s stockpile of 10.8 tons of plutonium with its definition of “nonproliferation track record?” Couldn’t Japan’s nuclear material stockpile be perceived as a proliferation threat?
This is a very serious concern for the U.S. I believe that the U.S. is embarrassed by Japan's stockpile, and strongly wants to do something about it. As a matter of policy, the U.S.-Japan 123 agreement ends in July 2018, and both sides have the options to renegotiate the agreement. I believe that Japan's plutonium stockpile must be a very serious issue as the U.S. and Japan discuss their new 123 agreement.
In your opinion, what is the biggest nonproliferation policy challenge for the United States in Northeast Asia? How can the United States overcome that challenge?
Without the shadow of the doubt, it is North Korea. North Korea is growing nuclear weapon stockpile, production of fissile materials, and nuclear tests. I have no idea what the solution is. There is no easy solution in regards to North Korea. However, what I would like to see us trying to do, although I have not much expectation for success, is to try and negotiate the least implausible things to do. That is, a time-bound moratorium on nuclear weapon test and missile test. We give North Korea an economic aid, for instance, if there is no nuclear or missile tests for few years. That would at least slow down North Korea's program, and that is not ambitious, but that it the least implausible way I can think of.