Talks between South Korea and the United States on renewing their 1974 nuclear cooperation agreement appear stalled, with the main sticking point the countries' differences over Seoul's pursuit of the nuclear fuel cycle. Many observers say they do not expect to see significant progress until next year, after the U.S. presidential election this November and South Korea's in December. A key point of contention is pyroprocessing, a spent fuel treatment process that South Korea is developing and says is significantly more proliferation resistant than conventional reprocessing. A U.S. official has publicly disagreed with that claim, saying that pyroprocessing is reprocessing. (See ACT, April 2011.) The current U.S.-South Korean pact gives the United States a strong say in South Korean reprocessing of U.S.-origin fuel. Seoul wants the new agreement to give it a freer hand in activities such as pyroprocessing.
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