Press release - 2 September, 2004
News that South Korea has uranium enriched far beyond that needed for peaceful nuclear use can do nothing other than add more fuel to the proliferation fire in the Korean Peninsula, warned Greenpeace, today. Given the threat implied by the South Korean uranium enrichment programme, Greenpeace renewed its call for South Korea, North Korea and Japan to halt all programs aimed at production of weapons-usable materials (highly enriched uranium and plutonium) and to renounce the use of such materials.
Far from underscoring the effectiveness of the International
Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Nuclear Weapons Safeguards Programme,
as claimed, it highlights the Agency's three decade failure to see
the military intentions behind the mask of South Korea's civil
nuclear programme.
Earlier this week, Greenpeace made a submission to an IAEA
Expert Group, meeting in Vienna, to discuss ways of reducing the
threat from sensitive nuclear facilities -- we proposed a simple
solution, close and dismantle them all. Greenpeace demands an
immediate ban on the production of fissile nuclear materials and a
phase out of nuclear power.
Greenpeace has for many years highlighted the threat of South
Korean nuclear weapons ambitions and warned in the 1990s of their
clandestine programme based around the Daeduk/Taejon Centre south
of Seoul. South Korea should immediately disclose all details of
its enrichment program (prohibited under the 1992 Denuclearization
Agreement with North Korea); how much plutonium it has separated at
facilities at Daeduk/Taejon; as well as what it has done with
blueprints and technology developed under its weapons program
authorized by former President Park.
This revelation should immediately end the ambitions of the
European nuclear reprocessing industry (Cogema and British Nuclear
Fuels) to sign contracts for plutonium reprocessing and weapons
usable mixed oxide fuel supply contracts with South Korea.
"It is a stark warning about the nuclear threat on the Peninsula
and the wider north east Asian region. Japan currently has a
plutonium stockpile of some 5 tonnes of plutonium, North Korea is
believed to have already acquired nuclear weapons, China, the
region's only 'official nuclear power' will also be watching and
deciding how to respond.
"US and international non-proliferation policy in the region is
ineffective and unsustainable in permitting some countries access
to nuclear materials while blocking others, and at the same time
putting some countries under a 'defensive' nuclear weapons
umbrella: its a policy courting disaster," said Greenpeace nuclear
weapons expert Shaun Burnie.
Notes: Copies of the Greenpeace submission to the IAEA are available at:http://www.greenpeace.org/international_en/multimedia/download/1/580206/0/IAEAsubmission04.pdf