Year
2014
Abstract
This special session has been organized to examine the role of proliferation resistance in connection with the possible implementation of pyroprocessing in the Republic of Korea. To facilitate that consideration, this paper examines how the IAEA and certa in IAEA Member States approached the challenges faced by Japan’s decision to construct a commercial scale Purex reprocessing plant. It begins with the preliminary steps taken within the IAEA Department of Safeguards during the 1980s (including the 1991 Sa feguards Implementation Plan), the backdrop of the US - Japan Cooperation Agreement, the creation of the LASCAR (LArge SCAle Reprocessing) project undertaken to establish a consensus on how safeguards should be applied and whether the outcome would be adequa te. The paper includes consideration of early R&D topics, the creation of the RRP Project Office and the steps undertaken to implement a complex safeguards system. Based on these considerations, recommendations are provided relating to how such safeguard s might be envisioned at a future pyroprocessing reprocessing plant , taking note of technological developments, IAEA staffing issues, potential institutional arrangements and the backdrop of regional sensitivities . Much of the early Japanese work was carr ied on before IAEA safeguards system was jolted by the revelations of non - compliance discovered in Iraq and the DPRK, and subsequently in other States. The paper considers these trends and the future of nuclear power against contemporary challenges, and i n conjunction with the extensive delays and extraordinary costs associated with the completion of the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant. In many ways, RRP was similar to other plants in France and the UK. Industrial scale plants bring their own challenges. A pyro plant in Korea is without similar plants to learn from, and the shortages in reprocessing expertise available to the IAEA on aqueous flow sheets will be even more challenging for an electrochemical separation plant.