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Nuclear Weapons & Proliferation
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May 8, 1998 North Korea: The State Department denied Korean reports that Washington will pay some construction costs for nuclear reactors in North Korea. Washington has been negotiating with the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Japan to finalize the shares each country will pay for the reactors, reportedly 70 percent for the ROK and 20-25 percent for Japan, with the U.S. responsible for paying or raising the remaining funds. Depreciation of the South Korean currency, the won, against the dollar has lowered the total estimated cost from more than $5 billion to perhaps $4 billion, but any direct U.S. contributions toward reactor construction remains controversial in Washington. Korean officials said that the U.S. would now agree to pay $55-million for reactor construction, according to wire reports citing the Seoul daily Chosun Ilbo. But the State Department immediately denied upon questioning that the U.S. had agreed to pay for any reactor construction. Meanwhile, no agreements have yet been made on payments for the delivery of heavy fuel oil to North Korea this year, required under the Agreed Framework. North Korean accused the U.S. on Friday of failing to live up to the agreement on shipping the oil, and threatened to restart its nuclear program. ROK-Japan: South Korea and Japan are falling out over a plan to intensify nuclear cooperation in the Pacific region. A 1996 initiative by Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, put forth at the April 1996 G-8 nuclear summit in Moscow, led to regional meetings in Tokyo in 1996 and in Seoul in 1997 to create a framework to enhance cooperation of Asian nations in nuclear safety affairs. In Seoul last year, a dozen states agreed to meet this year to further the plan. According to diplomatic sources involved, however, the effort has run aground on the insistence of Korea to set up a formal organization just to coordinate nuclear safety cooperation in Asia. Japan opposes this idea, preferring instead to fold nuclear safety into the more ambitious portfolio of a so-called ''Asiatom'' or ''Pacatom'' organization modeled on Euratom in the European Union, which Japan wants to establish in the region. Safety cooperation is seen by Japanese officials as a confidence-building first step in the creation of ''Asiatom. Japan: More troubles for nuclear firm. A planned reorganization of PNC, the Japanese firm responsible for a 1997 explosion, fire, and subsequent cover-up at a waste treatment plant at Tokai-mura, northeast of Tokyo, is slated to be approved by Japanese legislators in October but, regulators warn, may not be successful. Senior officials in Tokyo responsible for the reorganization of Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corp. (PNC) said that there is little confidence that PNC is prepared for its dual mission of cleaning up 30-years' output of nuclear waste at the Tokai site and continuing with nuclear research and development projects which, somehow, are supposed to be self-funding after a period of ten years. Officials also said that, in the meantime, PNC is losing funding and shedding staff. PNC, meanwhile, says it may work with France on a project to develop a modern gas centrifuge to enrich uranium, posing competition for world leader Urenco, a German-British-Dutch consortium. Already, Japanese engineers have designed a powerful centrifuge said to be as powerful as that now being built by Urenco in Europe. Cogema, the French firm which PNC officials said offered to form a partnership in future uranium enrichment technology, is downplaying the matter. The French firm says that PNC might be liquidated in the future. Nuclear Watch is written exclusively for Global Beat by Mark Hibbs, the European Editor of Nucleonics Week and Nuclear Fuel, leading specialist newsletters on international nuclear affairs, published by McGraw-Hill, Inc. Hibbs, based in Bonn, Germany, covers nuclear energy and proliferation problems in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Asia. Mark Hibbs' coordinates: Return to Global Beat Home Page Nuclear Watch | East Asian Security | Economic & Monetary Union | NATO Expansion | Nuclear Weapons and Proliferation | U.S. Defense Policy | Publications | Events | |
