Nuclear Nonproliferation in Support of Exporting Nuclear Power

Jae-Jun Han 한국방사성폐기물학회 2023 한국방사성폐기물학회 학술논문요약집 Vol.21 No.1

The global nuclear nonproliferation regime has developed over the past 50 years based on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) with three pillars: disarmament, nonproliferation and peaceful use of nuclear energy. Due to climate change and energy security in recent years, nuclear energy has been in the spotlight as an electricity generation source, and many countries are paying attention to introducing nuclear power plants (NPP). Whereas exporters pursue profit by selling their NPP, international organisations and member states that seek nuclear nonproliferation are concerned with potential proliferation risks by expanding the nuclear power industry worldwide. Simultaneously, the member states’ right to peaceful use of nuclear energy has to be guaranteed as specified in NPT Article IV. Accordingly, the trade of nuclear power between the member states taking full responsibility is desirable from the nonproliferation perspective. This paper investigates whether the countries capable of exporting their nuclear power have complied with the global nuclear nonproliferation regime, deriving the role and position that South Korea is faced with, accordingly, has to take. The dynamics of exporters’ competitiveness are discussed, emphasising that compliance with the regime must be considered a qualification when exporting NPP. The achievement that South Korea has attained, fulfilling its role and responsibility under the regime, is highlighted. Since South Korea has developed the nuclear power industry in cooperation with the United States under the NPT and the ROK-US Agreement for Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation, the status quo of the two countries in the nuclear nonproliferation and industrial landscape is discussed. Among the newcomers who have officially announced the plan to introduce NPP, Saudi Arabia is put in a crucial position to aggregate or alleviate nuclear nonproliferation. To this end, the rationale for the ROK-US cooperation is proposed, evaluating the value of nuclear nonproliferation in support of exporting nuclear power.

21세기 한국 원자력외교 과제와 대책

전봉근 국가안보전략연구원 2008 국가안보와 전략 Vol.8 No.2

In a world exposed to the complex threat of climate change and soaring oil prices, nuclear energy is counted one of the potential energy sources for securing future energy supplies. Especially Korea, a highly dependent country on energy exports, has a vital national interest on nuclear energy vitalizations for future production of electricity and transit hydrogen. However, the research and development(R & D) of nuclear energy along with its usage have been generally restricted due to its dual-usage properties:peaceful use and usage for military purposes. In the case of Korea, the U.S. is regulating its R&D through the Agreement for cooperation between the ROK and the U.S. concerning Civil Uses of Atomic Energy. Korea in order to develop Gen IV and advanced nuclear fuel cycle technology needs the U.S. consent and cooperation. This agreement currently in effect, will expire on year 2014, and negotiations for a new cooperation agreement is expected. This paper focuses on the “nonproliferation trustiness”as a determinant factor for bilateral nuclear energy cooperation between ROK and the U.S., because the latter approaches international nuclear cooperation from the perspective of“ nonproliferation.”The U.S. has a differential nuclear cooperative relations with 29 countries, which can be labeled as follows, according to its transfer of and cooperation for the core technology ; full-fledged partnership, strategic partnership, vested interest partnership, and restricted partnership. Korea falls in the category of“ restricted partnership.”Thus, the tangible goal for Korea is to upgrade its status from restricted to full-fledged partnership. Some of American experts assert that Korea's R&D for pyroprocessing will give it a basis for a nuclear weapons' program in the future, weakening the nonproliferation system thus delaying the resolution of the North Korean nuclear crisis. These assertions, however, disregard the change within South and North Korea and its relations as well as the change in the international environment since the 70's. The new ROK-U.S. nuclear cooperation relationship should reflect Korea's science-technology capabilities, the real increase in demand of the nuclear energy, the history of Korea being an exemplary country of nonproliferation, the decrease of North Korea's threat, and the increase of its reliance on the South. To further strengthen nonproliferation capability, Korea should foment its nonproliferation policy and foreign diplomacy along with a public education and diplomacy. It should establish an institution that would lead nonproliferation policy development and exchanges, take care of the public education, expand participation on international nonproliferation, and support latecomers joining the nonproliferation system. Lastly, Korea should also increase the investment in nuclear energy policy R&D ; train nuclear policy makers and diplomatic experts ; and establish a network among international experts. 기후변화와 고유가의 복합적 위기 속에서 원자력은 미래 에너지 안보문 제를 해결하는데 가장 유력한 에너지원으로 꼽히고 있다. 특히 에너지의 대 외의존도가 매우 높은 한국의 입장에서는 미래 전기생산과 수송용 수소생 산을 위해 원자력을 활성화하는데 국가의 사활적 이익이 걸려있다. 한편, 원자력이 평화적 이용 분야 이외에도 군사적으로 사용될 수 있는 이중용도 적 성격을 갖고 있어, 일반적으로 그 연구개발과 활용이 규제되고 있다. 우 리나라의 경우, 특히 미국이 한미원자력협력협정을 통하여 한국의 원자력 연구개발을 규제하고 있다. 한국은 차세대 원자로와 선진 핵연료주기 시스 템을 개발하기 위해서 미국의 동의와 협조가 필요하다. 현재 발효 중인 한 미 간 원자력협력협정은 2014년 만료되고 곧 새로운 협력협정을 위한 협 상이 시작될 전망이다. 이 글은 양자 간 원자력협력관계를 결정하는 변수의 하나로‘비확산 신 뢰도’에 주목한다. 미정부가 국제원자력협력을 비확산 차원에서 접근하기 때문이다. 미국은 원자력협력협정을 체결한 29개국과 차등적인 협력관계를 유지하고 있다. 민감기술의 이전과 협력 여부에 따라, 전면적 협력국, 전략 적 협력국, 기득권 협력국, 제한적 협력국 등으로 분류할 수 있는데 한국은 제한적 협력국에 속한다. 따라서 우리의 최대 원자력외교 과제는 제한적 협 력을 전면적 협력 관계로 지위를 상승시키는 것이다. 미국의 일부 전문가들은 한국의 파이로프로세싱 연구개발이 한국의 핵개 발능력을 강화시키고, 비확산체제를 약화시키며, 북핵해결을 지연시킬 것이 라고 비판한다. 그러나 이들 주장은 70년대 이후 한국의 변화, 북한의 변화, 남북관계의 변화, 그리고 세계환경 변화를 무시하는 오류를 범한다. 새로운 한미원자력협력관계는 한국의 과학기술역량과 원자력 실질 수요 증가, 비확 산 모범국, 북한위협의 감소와 북한의 대남의존 증가 등을 감안해야 한다. 나아가 우리는 비확산 역량을 강화하기 위해서 비확산 정책과 외교를 강 화하고 비확산 국민교육과 홍보도 개시해야 한다. 비확산 정책 개발과 교류 및 대국민교육을 주도하고, 국제 비확산체제 구축에 대한 참여를 확대하며 비확산 후발국에 대하여 비확산체제 구축을 지원해 줄 비확산 연구기관도 필요하다. 마지막으로 원자력정책 연구개발에 대한 투자를 확대하여, 원자 력 정책 및 외교 전문가를 양성하고 국제 전문가 네트워크를 구축할 것을 제기한다.

핵안보 시대 국제비확산체제의 글로벌 거버넌스와 한국의 외교

황지환 국가안보전략연구원 2011 국가안보와 전략 Vol.11 No.4

The Nuclear Security Summit was held at April 2010 with the summits from 47 nations and other leaders from international organization such as UN, IAEA, EU,etc. This conference was initiated by U.S. president Barack Obama, who has pursued a strong nuclear nonproliferation policy and also suggested ‘a world without nuclear weapons’ in his special address in Prague of April 2009. The main issues of the Nuclear Security Summit was to strengthen nuclear security to prevent the nuclear terrorism, which is mainly due to the increasing danger of nuclear terrorism after September 11 terrorist attacks. In this sense, the concept of nuclear security has spreaded in addition to the nonproliferation. Because the Obama administration has emphasized the importance of nuclear security, it is a huge challenge for South Korea as well as a good opportunity. The spread of nuclear security has changed the established nonproliferation regime and it raised the need to come up with a new nuclear strategy. It is especially important because the spread of nuclear security may change the environment for not only the North Korean nuclear issue but also the ongoing negotiation for the revision of nuclear cooperation between South Korea and the U.S. 작년 4월 12일부터 이틀간 워싱턴 D.C.에서는 세계 47개국 정상과 유엔, 국제원자력기구(IAEA), 유럽연합의 대표가 한자리에 모인 매우 특별한 회의가 열렸다. 바로 핵안보정상회의(Nuclear Security Summit)였다. 이 회의는 취임이후 강력한 핵비확산(nuclear nonproliferation) 정책을 펼치고 있는 미국 오바마 대통령이 ‘핵무기 없는 세계’(a world without nuclear weapons)을 주창했던 2009년 4월 프라하 연설 당시 제안한 것이었다. 핵안보정상회의의 주요 이슈는 핵테러리즘 방지를 위한 핵안보(nuclear security)의강화였는데, 이는 지난 2001년 9.11 테러이후 테러그룹에 의한 핵무기 및 핵물질의 획득시도 가능성이 증가함에 따라 핵테러 위험성이 높아진 데 따른 것이었다. 이러한 과정에서 주목할 만한 사실은 기존의 비확산 개념에 더해 핵안보 개념이 확산되고 있다는 것인데, 특히 오바마 행정부가 이를 더욱 강조하고 있다는 점은 한국에게도 커다란 기회이자 도전으로 다가온다. 이는 그동안 비확산 문제를 중심으로 진행되어 온 국제비확산체제가 새로운 변화의 모습을 보여주고 있다는 점을 의미하며, 이에 따라 우리도 핵문제에 대한 새로운 대응전략을 모색할 것을 필요로 한다. 특히 작년에는 핵안보정상회의와 더불어 핵확산금지조약(NPT)의 평가회의(Review Conference)가 개최되어 국제 핵비확산체제의 새로운 발전과 변화에 힘을 보탰는데, 북한 핵문제와 한미원자력협정 개정 등 핵비확산과 원자력의 평화적 이용 등에 핵심적인 국가적이해가 걸려있는 한국으로서는 핵안보 개념의 등장과 확산은 매우 중요한 국제환경변화로 이해된다.

국제레짐의 강제집행력과 개별국가들과의 관계 : 1970년대 국제핵비확산레짐과 일본의 핵재처리정책 비교연구 International Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime and Nuclear Reprocessing Policies of South Korea and Japan in the 1970s

김기정,박한규 경남대학교 극동문제연구소 2002 한국과 국제정치 Vol.18 No.4

This study seeks to explain why Japan and Korea had different consequences in their nuclear reprocessing policies when they both faced the nuclear nonproliferation pressures from the United States in the 1970s. Although both countries began to develop nuclear reprocessing programs as part of long-term nuclear power development programs, Korea had to drop the reprocessing program due to the strong pressure from the United States while Japan succeeded in continuing its reprocessing program as originally planned despite the similar pressure from the United States. The authors argue that the different policy outcomes with regard to the reprocessing programs between Japan and Korea mainly resulted from the different effects of the coercive enforcement of the international nuclear nonproliferation regime that were applied to them. The coercive enforcement of the international regime has different effects on the behaviors of the individual states according to the nature of the targeting state in the regime, the relational characteristics of core state and targeting state in the regime, and the availability of negotiation strategies such as issue-linkage strategy. In the 1970s, Japan and Korea showed a big difference in terms of their position in the international nuclear nonproliferation regime. Japan not only entered into a group of advanced nuclear countries but also played a very important role in maintaining the international regime in the 1970s. On the other hand, Korea only remained a targeting state that should be controlled in terms of nuclear nonproliferation. The difference of their positions in the regime brought about different effects of the coercive enforcement on Japan and Korea respectively with regard to the reprocessing issue. The different effects of the coercive enforcement also resulted from the different relational characteristics between the United States, Japan, and Korea. The United States and Japan maintained a very close interdependent relations in the political security and economic arenas, while Korea had a very dependent relationship with the United States both militarily and economically. This gap between the US-Japan relationship and the US-Korea relationship brought about different responses of Japan and Korea against the American nonproliferation pressure. Lastly, Korea did not have effective negotiation strategies such as issue-linkage strategy to enhance its position in dealing with the reprocessing issue with the United States while Japan effectively exercised issue-linkage strategy to fend off the US pressure on its reprocessing program. The availability of effective negotiation strategy also determined the difference in the degree of the coercive enforcement applied to the reprocessing programs of Korea and Japan.

원자력안전법에 의한 국제규제물자의 수출입허가 법령 체계의 적절성에 관한 연구

김종숙 ( Jong Sook Kim ) 한국법정책학회 2013 법과 정책연구 Vol.13 No.3

우리나라는 비교적 짧은 원자력이용 역사에도 불구하고 2009년 상용원전 수출, 2010년 다목적연구로의 수출이라는 고기술력을 보유한 국가가 되었다. 한편, 원자력은 특성상 민수용 용도 뿐만 아니라 군사적 용도로도 사용되는 이중성으로 인하여 국제적으로 조약, 협약 및 협정 등을 통해 엄격한 다중규제 체계를 수립하고 있다. 이러한 조약 및 협정 당사국 의무 이행을 위하여 원자력안전법은 특히 핵물질, 비핵물질, 시설 및 장비와 같은 원자력물자는 ‘국제규제물자’로 정의하고 있는 바, 이들은 적절한 수출입허가 절차를 필요로 한다. 하지만, 원자력안전법에서 국제규제물자의 수출입 규제를 위한 조항으로는 단지 제107조만 수립되어 있을 뿐이며 원자력안전위원회가 허가하는 ‘국제규제물자’의 구체 이행절차 등은 제107조에 의하여 대외무역법에 모두 위임되어 있고 그 명칭도 ‘전략물자’중 ‘원자력전용품목’으로 되어 있다. 이런 연유로 ‘국제규제물자’와 ‘원자력전용품목’ 간의 범위가 상호 부합되지 않으며, 물자별로 상이한 수출입허가의 절차와 허가를 위한 행정 행위에 대한 법적 근거의 체계화가 요구된다. 이에 본고는 원자력물자에 대한 수출입규제를 위한 현행 법령체계의 문제점과 바람직한 법령 체계의 정비 필요성을 제기하고자 하였다. 즉, 원자력안전법령 체계의 미비로 인하여 발생된 국제규제물자의 수출입규제상의 루프홀 문제를 미연에 방지하기 위하여 국제법적 체계와 국내 법령체계를 고찰하고 이에 기반으로 현행 법령이 가지는 몇가지 문제점들을 제기하였다. 우선, 원자력안전법과 대외무역법에 의한 규제 대상의 불일치성의 문제, 원자력안전법 제107조와 대외무역법의 여러 조항들과의 연계 분석을 통해 동 107조가 대외무역법 제12조의 ‘통합 공고’를 위하여 수립된 것이라는 점, 그리고 107조의 문안 자체가 가지는 부적절성 문제로 인하여 원자력안전법의 제107조가 핵비확산 목적의 수출입규제를 위한 근거규정으로서 적합하지 않고 또한 법적 근거로 제시될 수 없다는 점을 적시하였다. 원자력물자에 부과되는 다중적인 국제규제의 특성과 원자력물자의 수출입이 매우 활발해 진 현실을 반영하여 과거 수입국 패러다임으로부터 벗어나 공급국 위상을 반영한 ‘핵비확산 목표의 수출입규제’를 위해서는 시급한 법령체계의 정비가 필요하다. Korea has became a country exporting commercial nuclear power plant and research reactor recently with nuclear high technology in spite of a relatively short history since staring operation of Kori Unit 1 in 1978. Nuclear energy is controlled under strict international monitor and verification mechanism based on the various treaty, convention and bilateral agreements, etc. in order that commercial usage will not be diverted to nuclear weapons since nuclear energy has dual characteristics for peaceful as well as military use. As the party to those treaties and agreements, the Nuclear Safety Act(NSA) defines nuclear items like nuclear material, facilities and equipments as ‘internationally controlled goods(ICG)’ and they are required a appropriate administrative regulations regarding ex-import licensing procedures. In spite of it, NSA has only Article 107 as a clause for regulating of ex-import activities. Furthermore, detailed implementation procedures of licensing for ICG are supposed to apply the Foreign Trade Act(FTA) and its name is called as ‘nuclear items for especially designed or prepared(EDP items)’ as one category of Strategic Goods under FTA. What is problem is that scope between the ICG and the EDP items are not only inconsistent each other, but licensing procedures and administrative act regarding two categories are different. Such situation has been resulted in inadequacy of NSA`s legislation system, it is turned out a loophole in ex-import control of ICG. In this regard, the paper reviews the international legal system for export control of nuclear items and domestic NSA and FTA in order to propose a necessity of modifying into desirable legislation structure which had been caused by some problems of current ex-import control legislation system. Based on the analysis, the paper points out some findings as followes. First of all, the paper speculates a clear inconsistency of controlled nuclear items between NSA and FTA and it was found that the Article 107 of the NSA had been fully established for Article 12 “Integrated Ministry Regulations” of FTA through analyzing mutual relation among some Articles of FTA and the Article 107 of NSA. Besides, the paper shows clearly that the contents of the Article 107 itself demonstrates how not adequate and inappropriate it is as an Article for a legal basis of ex-import control with a purpose of nuclear nonproliferation. It is time to consider the multiple control framework on the nuclear items and the reality of requesting by the international community seriously on a sincere responsibility of nuclear suppliers. Furthermore, exports of nuclear items are increasing through technology development in Korea. In this regard, NSSC, the licensing authority of ICG is required to not only fulfill its role faithfully, but to modify its legislation system which is suitable for ex-import control enforcing nuclear nonproliferation purpose.

한국의 핵농축 권한에 대한 소고

이병철(Lee Byong-Chul) 고려대학교세종캠퍼스 공공정책연구소 2020 Journal of North Korea Studies Vol.6 No.2

Securing the right to enrich is, in essence, a necessary proposition as a sovereign state. While there are no current international laws prohibiting uranium enrichment and reprocessing for peaceful purposes, the United States strictly bans enrichment and reprocessing through the bilateral nuclear agreement. As the majority of South Korea’s prominent politicians and the vast majority of South Korean nuclear experts believe that a nuclear bomb would in the long term be a threat to their national interests, South Korea has ever maintained its stance that the 1992 denuclearization joint statement with North Korea, in addition to the nuclear cooperation pact with the United States remains valid. South Korea acknowledges that possession of nuclear weapons would provide only a short-term regional advantage that would turn into a longer-term vulnerability, because sooner or later, Japan, which many nuclear pundits claim is on the threshold of a de-facto nuclear-armed state in many respects, would follow suit and a regional nuclear arms race would be inescapable. The technical choices South Korea has made in the configuration of the nuclear program demonstrate a strong preference for a robust enrichment capability rather than for a rapid nuclear weapons breakout capability. Given that South Korea’s development program is focused on next-generation technology in terms of nuclear export, it is time to consider how to obtain the right to enrich, including the possibility of nullifying the dead-on-arrival 1992 denuclearization declaration.

사례 기반 지능형 수출통제 시스템

홍원의(Woneui Hong),김의현(Uihyun Kim),조신희(Sinhee Cho),김산성(Sansung Kim),이문용(Mun Yong Yi),신동훈(Donghoon Shin) 한국지능정보시스템학회 2014 지능정보연구 Vol.20 No.3

As the demand of nuclear power plant equipment is continuously growing worldwide, the importance of handling nuclear strategic materials is also increasing. While the number of cases submitted for the exports of nuclear-power commodity and technology is dramatically increasing, preadjudication (or prescreening to be simple) of strategic materials has been done so far by experts of a long-time experience and extensive field knowledge. However, there is severe shortage of experts in this domain, not to mention that it takes a long time to develop an expert. Because human experts must manually evaluate all the documents submitted for export permission, the current practice of nuclear material export is neither time-efficient nor cost-effective. Toward alleviating the problem of relying on costly human experts only, our research proposes a new system designed to help field experts make their decisions more effectively and efficiently. The proposed system is built upon case-based reasoning, which in essence extracts key features from the existing cases, compares the features with the features of a new case, and derives a solution for the new case by referencing similar cases and their solutions. Our research proposes a framework of case-based reasoning system, designs a case-based reasoning system for the control of nuclear material exports, and evaluates the performance of alternative keyword extraction methods (full automatic, full manual, and semi-automatic). A keyword extraction method is an essential component of the case-based reasoning system as it is used to extract key features of the cases. The full automatic method was conducted using TF-IDF, which is a widely used de facto standard method for representative keyword extraction in text mining. TF (Term Frequency) is based on the frequency count of the term within a document, showing how important the term is within a document while IDF (Inverted Document Frequency) is based on the infrequency of the term within a document set, showing how uniquely the term represents the document. The results show that the semi-automatic approach, which is based on the collaboration of machine and human, is the most effective solution regardless of whether the human is a field expert or a student who majors in nuclear engineering. Moreover, we propose a new approach of computing nuclear document similarity along with a new framework of document analysis. The proposed algorithm of nuclear document similarity considers both documentto-document similarity (α) and document-to-nuclear system similarity (β), in order to derive the final score (γ) for the decision of whether the presented case is of strategic material or not. The final score (γ) represents a document similarity between the past cases and the new case. The score is induced by not only exploiting conventional TF-IDF, but utilizing a nuclear system similarity score, which takes the context of nuclear system domain into account. Finally, the system retrieves top-3 documents stored in the case base that are considered as the most similar cases with regard to the new case, and provides them with the degree of credibility. With this final score and the credibility score, it becomes easier for a user to see which documents in the case base are more worthy of looking up so that the user can make a proper decision with relatively lower cost. The evaluation of the system has been conducted by developing a prototype and testing with field data. The system workflows and outcomes have been verified by the field experts. This research is expected to contribute the growth of knowledge service industry by proposing a new system that can effectively reduce the burden of relying on costly human experts for the export control of nuclear materials and that can be considered as a meaningful example of knowledge service application.

Is the NPT in Trouble? Setting the Stage for the 2015 Review Conference

( Hee-seog Kwon ) 서울대학교 통일평화연구원 2014 Asian Journal of Peacebuilding Vol.2 No.2

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) regime once again faces a serious challenge in the run-up to the NPT Review Conference scheduled for April 27 to May 22, 2015. This can be attributed to the perceived delay in implementation of commitments made by the states parties at the 2010 NPT Review Conference. Although the 2015 Review Conference is still half a year away, shaky U.S.-Russia relations, the armed conflict directly involving the Israelis and Palestinians, and the outcome of the U.S. mid-term elections will not be conducive to the review process. Both the nuclear-weapon states and the non-nuclear-weapon states should redouble their efforts to narrow their differences on key issues.

Is the NPT in Trouble? Setting the Stage for the 2015 Review Conference

권희석 서울대학교 통일평화연구원 2014 Asian Journal of Peacebuilding Vol.2 No.2

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) regime once again faces a serious challenge in the run-up to the NPT Review Conference scheduled for April 27 to May 22, 2015. This can be attributed to the perceived delay in implementation of commitments made by the states parties at the 2010 NPT Review Conference. Although the 2015 Review Conference is still half a year away, shaky U.S.-Russia relations, the armed conflict directly involving the Israelis and Palestinians, and the outcome of the U.S. mid-term elections will not be conducive to the review process. Both the nuclear-weapon states and the non-nuclear-weapon states should redouble their efforts to narrow their differences on key issues.

North Korea`s Nuclear and Missile Threat: Recalibration of Policy Measures

( Jiyong Ryu ),( Dongmin Lee ) 한국국방연구원 2017 The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis Vol.29 No.3

Despite the unceasing efforts of the international community to halt North Korea`s nuclear ambitions, North Korea`s nuclear development and missile technology have aggressively progressed over time. Why did the efforts fail and what would be the new direction to fix the problem, if necessary? To answer these central questions, this paper attempts to analyze the problems of sanctions on North Korea and assess North Korea`s nuclear development and capability. This paper suggests that a recalibration of policy measures, including a dual-track strategy that, on the one hand leads to internal change in the North, while on the other, results in strong external pressure, continues to be significant for the ultimate resolution of North Korea`s nuclear quandaries. If left alone, the nuclear situation in North Korea may likely shift from the previously limited problem of denuclearization on the Korean peninsula to the broader global concern of nonproliferation.