Seoul and Washington are kicking the nuclear reprocessing can down the hill – until this autumn.

Korea and the United States have agreed to start talks about the revision of a bilateral atomic energy agreement this fall, it emerged on Monday. Seoul is keen to reprocess its own spent fuel rods, which it is barred from doing under the agreement, but Washington has so far been reluctant to permit it since the process results in the production of weapons-grade plutonium.

But in a meeting Monday with senior Foreign Ministry officials in Seoul, Robert Einhorn, the U.S. State Department’s special advisor for non-proliferation and arms control, apparently signaled willingness to consider Seoul’s proposal to use a process known as pyroprocessing, which does not produce plutonium that is pure enough for nuclear weapons.

But, Rod Adams and Dan Thurman criticize the Obama administration (~21 to 36 min.)for its position on prohibiting South Korea from reprocessing nuclear fuel, and Rod Adams trashes the argument that reprocessing nuclear fuel is a proliferation risk.

One plank in the anti-plutonium platform was the fear-inducing assertion that an ad hoc group of “terrorists” could use stolen reactor grade plutonium as the raw material for a nuclear weapon. A key part of the evidence used to support this assertion was the “known fact” that the US had conducted a test using “reactor grade” plutonium that they claimed conclusively proved that any of the known difficulties associated with reactor grade plutonium could be overcome.

Most of the technical experts who might have disputed this politically driven assertion still worked within the cloistered nuclear weapons production enterprise, but even if they had not been professionally restricted from comment, most of the technical detail required to dispute the assertion would have been too complex or too highly classified for a public debate.

For the 33 years since 1977 there has been little to no resistance within the US to the established policy of considering reactor grade plutonium as “weapons usable”. This policy has helped to restrict nuclear energy developments by adding cost and by helping to inflate concerns about nuclear waste. When nuclear energy skeptics ask “what do you do with the waste”, nuclear advocates have been unable to easily answer “we’ll recycle it” since that answer violates US policy and would not be easy to implement.

Knowing what you now know about the actual material used in that test, you have the information required to question the assertion that reactor grade material is useful for weapons. You should also use your critical thinking skills to question the motivations of the people who pushed so hard for so many years to force other nations to forgo actions to recover valuable raw material from used nuclear fuel.

Fuel assemblies removed from commercial nuclear reactors still contain 95% of the initial potential energy. The material is not even close to pure enough for the very specialized purpose of turning it into a weapon, but even with its complicating impurities, it is acceptable for use as fuel for new power producing reactors.

The US should stop worrying about the vanishingly remote possibility that commercial nuclear fuel recycling facilities could be cover operations for states with nuclear weapons ambitions or that they might be useful targets for nefarious folks.

Adams sees no reason for the Obama administration to prohibit reprocessing because of proliferation concerns – again the Indian hypocrisy rears its head – unless the administration wants to frustrate the prospects for nuclear enterprise in general. Both Adams and Thurman defend Seoul’s trustworthiness and lambaste North Korea, including its export efforts in Syria.Plus, if South Koreans – and me typing on this computer with the fan running and the lights on – are consuming twice the OECD average, the ROK will need some more mega-wattage fast.

Filed under: Korea, Podcasts, Science, USA, WMD Tagged: dan thurman, dprk, india, north korea, npr, nuclear fuel reprocessing, plutonium, rod adams, rok, South Korea