
Clinton Administration Plutonium Policy and North Korea

U.S. policy on the use of plutonium has remained
essentially the same under the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton
administrations: the DPRK and South Korea must renounce all
plutonium, but Japan can acquire as much as it wants from
U.S.-supplied nuclear fuel. This discriminatory approach
was reiterated by President Clinton, whose nonproliferation
policy states, "The United States does not encourage the
civil use of plutonium and, accordingly, does not itself
engage in plutonium reprocessing for either nuclear power
or nuclear explosive purposes. The United States, however,
will maintain its existing commitments regarding the use of
plutonium in civil nuclear programs in Western Europe and
Japan" 1341. (At the same time, U.S. Energy Secretary Hazel
O'Leary has launched an initiative to explore alternatives
to reprocessing and has expressed her opposition to
reprocessing and plutonium fuel cycles.)

The U.S. has insisted that the DPRK give up its
reprocessing plant and all plutonium ambitions. South
Korean efforts to acquire reprocessing plants, plutonium
separation technology, and related technology have also
been quashed by firm U.S. diplomacy. U.S. plutonium policy
toward Japan is governed by the 1988 revision of the
U.S.-Japanese nuclear cooperation agreement that gave Japan
advance approval to reprocess as much U.S.-origin spent
fuel as it wants over a 30-year period [35]. The previous
agreement, which was not due to expire until 2003,
empowered the U.S. to decide each Japanese request for
reprocessing and plutonium use on a case-by-case basis.

In November 1991, while the North-South Korean bilateral
denuclearization agreement was being negotiated, then-U.S.
Secretary of State James Baker made clear that prohibiting
fuel cycle facilities was not sufficient, and "the only
firm assurance against a nuclear arms race in the Korean
peninsula would be a credible agreement by both Seoul and
Pyongyang to abstain from the production or acquisition of
any weapons-grade nuclear material" [emphasis supplied]
[36]. It is significant that the North South agreement
included a ban on production but not on acquisition of
plutonium -- thus presumably leaving South Korea free to
seek reprocessing services and delivery of separated
plutonium from the U.K. or France, as Japan has done.

The present U.S. discriminatory policy may not prove
diplomatically sustainable. Japan and South Korea are
democratic governments, they are NPT members with
full-scope safeguards, and they have defense treaties with
the U.S. and large-scale nuclear power programs. The U.S.
State Department must explain to South Korea why it trusts
Tokyo, but not Seoul, with plutonium. U.S. policy suggests
that NPT membership and IAEA safeguards compliance are the
ultimate solution to the Northeast Asian proliferation
problem. Absent the elimination of civil plutonium,
however, this approach can only serve to codify the problem
with an NPT/ IAEA stamp of approval.

