COUNTRYMAN: NO ECONOMIC REASON FOR NATIONS TO DEVELOP ENRICHMENT

As the Administration seeks a two-year extension of the current civil nuclear agreement with South Korea, a State Department official said late last week said that there should not be any economic reason for a country to develop a new enrichment capability. The rights to enrich and reprocess have been a sticking point in negotiations between the United States and South Korea in renewing the agreement, which currently expires in March 2014. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation Thomas Countryman addressed the issue Thursday at a House Foreign affairs subcommittee hearing. “We rely also upon the free market around the world in order to provide a reliable supply of fuel for nuclear power plants. And we seek to supplement that with fuel banks located in the United States and in Russia to guarantee against any deficiencies in the market, so that there is no reasonable economic incentive for a country to develop a new enrichment capability,” he said.

 

A bill introduced last month to the House Foreign Affairs Committee seeks a simple extension of the U.S.-South Korea 123 agreement until March 2016, aligning with an Administration request. Countryman was questioned at the hearing on whether the new agreement should grant advance consent to South Korea on enrichment and reprocessing. Countryman added, “One of the tools we use as well is, of course, the nuclear cooperation agreements, ‘123’ agreements, by which the United States not only establishes its presence in the international markets, but also is able to exert a benign influence upon states in order to further discourage the spread of such enrichment and reprocessing technology.”