Seoul seeks ability to make nuclear fuel

South Korea is pressing the Obama administration for US permission to produce its own nuclear fuel, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. According to the paper, nonproliferation experts said that the move could trigger a wider nuclear-arms race in North Asia and the Middle East. The negotiation between Seoul and Washington, though part of a broader, long-term civilian nuclear cooperation agreement, is taking place as nuclear pressures swell on both sides of the Korean peninsula. North Korea has expanded its atomic-weapons capability in recent months. It announced Tuesday that it was reopening a reactor complex used to harvest weapons-grade plutonium. Those actions have fueled calls in South Korea for the government in Seoul to respond by developing its own atomic-weapons capability. South Korea's government has reassured Washington during the negotiations that it isn't seeking to develop the ability to build nuclear weapons. "This government has no intention at all of pursuing nuclear capabilities in terms of weapons," said a senior government official in Seoul. But American lawmakers and proliferation experts are concerned that the technologies Seoul is seeking the ability to enrich uranium and reprocess spent nuclear-reactor fuel would provide it with the key technologies to produce the fissile materials for a bomb. That capacity could further inflame tensions between the Koreas and risk sparking a broader arms race in Northeast Asia, potentially including Japan and Taiwan. "Mutual animosities are feeding off each other on the Korean peninsula," said Tom Moore, who served for the past decade as the senior adviser on proliferation issues at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "South Korea has no economic or practical reasons to engage in these activities at this time." US negotiators fear that allowing South Korea to develop any of the requested technologies would have knock-on effects across the Middle East and Asia, where the US has sought in recent years to seal deals that forbid countries from producing their own nuclear fuel. Jordan, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia could demand the same terms, and it would reinforce Iran's desire to continue with its nuclear program, these people worry.