Seoul offers to use North Korean nuclear fuel rods

South Korea is proposing to use North Korean nuclear fuel rods, to be removed from a reactor under a six-nation disarmament deal, for South Korean power plants, a news report said Sunday.

Seoul’s Yonhap news agency quoted an unnamed government source as saying negotiators should decide how to dispose of the nuclear fuel that will be removed as part of the full dismantling of the North’s nuclear facilities under the deal.

“Bringing the North Korean fuel rods into the South is one of the options now under consideration,” the source said. But, “a study has to be completed over whether the North Korean fuel rods can be used by South Korean nuclear power plants.”

The source did not clarify Seoul’s position on what to do with weapons-grade plutonium — a key source for making atomic bombs — that the North has supposedly extracted from the spent fuel rods.

Seoul’s top nuclear envoy Chun Yung-Woo said Friday that the US-led disabling of North Korea’s nuclear site was proceeding smoothly, with thousands of spent fuel rods expected to be relocated from a five-megawatt reactor to a cooling pond starting next year.

The North staged a nuclear test in October 2006 despite international warnings but agreed in February to an aid-for-disarmament deal under the landmark six-nation nuclear talks.

Under the accord endorsed by the two Koreas, China, the United States, Russia and Japan, the North began disabling three of its main nuclear facilities at Yongbyon under US supervision in November.

As part of the deal, the North should disable the Yongbyon plants and declare a full list of its nuclear programmes by year-end in return for receiving one-million-tonnes of oil or equivalent energy aid.

If the North keeps up its end of the deal, the United States has agreed to move towards removing the country from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and to normalise diplomatic ties.

The North on Friday reaffirmed its commitment to disabling the plants by year-end as long as its partners kept their promises.

Top US nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill said Friday in Seoul he hoped North Korea would be nuclear-free by next year but added that the isolated and impoverished country must give up all its atomic material.

Hill plans to fly Monday to North Korea to inspect work under way at its Yongbyon complex to disable three plutonium-producing nuclear plants.

Seoul, Sunday, AFP