SOUTH KOREA: Seoul bursting with ambitions to become a leading exporter of nuclear power plant reactors

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Nov 4 1995 (IPS) - South Korea’s ambitions of becoming a leading exporter of nuclear power are set to get a boost as Seoul moves to cement a deal with Pyongyang on the shipment of a light- water nuclear reactor to North Korea.

Talks are continuing in New York this week according to South Korea’s ‘Yonhap’ news agency which quoted an unidentified South Korean official as saying that North Korea is eager to conclude negotiations on the reactor supply contract.

“South Korea is even more impatient than Japan to join the world’s leading nuclear power exporters. The North Korean deal, when realised, would be a feather in its cap,” said Sae Kubo, a researcher at the Citizen’s Nuclear Information Network, a Japanese environmental group opposed to nuclear proliferation.

South Korea pushed hard to be the key player in a landmark agreement made last October between the United States and North Korea that guaranteed the supply two light-water nuclear reactors to Pyongyang. In return, Washington is pressing North Korea not to pursue its clandestine nuclear weapons programme.

Seoul agreed to shoulder sixty per cent of the four billion dollar deal in return for a pledge that the light-water nuclear reactors to be installed, would be South Korean. These reactors do not produce weapons-grade plutonium, which North Korea’s current reactors are suspected of doing.

North Korea has acknowledged it has separated small quantities of plutonium at its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, 90 km north of the capital Pyongyang.

The more important consideration for South Korea, given the communist North’s “wayward” policies, is to become a leading player in nuclear energy, according to Young Jeh Kim, an analyst at the Institute of Korea Studies, a government research organisation. “Then it can lead the promotion of a nuclear deterrence policy in east Asia.”

Lacking in natural resources, South Korea has single-mindedly pursued a nuclear power development programme for the past 30 years.

Last year, the government contributed 1.5 billion dollars for nuclear research and development.

And in July, South Korean President Kim Young San launched a 158 million dollar nuclear fusion research project to help meet South Korea’s future energy needs.

In comparison to fission, the process behind the atomic bomb, fusion produces less radioactive waste, the build-up of which is causing a major disposal headache for the South Korean authorities.