By Reuben Staines
Staff Reporter


Shaun Burnie, right, an activist from Greenpeace International, and other protestors hold an antinuclear demonstration at the Korea Federation for Environmental Movement’s office in Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap

The advanced, civilian nuclear programs of Japan and South Korea could pose a greater proliferation threat than North Korea’s nuclear weapons development, according to a visiting environmental activist.

Shaun Burnie, an anti-nuclear campaign coordinator working for Greenpeace International, said the proliferation of weapons-usable nuclear materials by the two countries is ``out of control.’’

``Japan’s plutonium program is on a scale that Pyongyang couldn’t even dream of,’’ he said during an interview with The Korea Times.

Burnie, who was visiting Seoul to present a paper to an international conference at the National Assembly, said a new reprocessing facility in Rokkasho-mura, northern Japan will allow Tokyo to produce 8,000 kilograms of plutonium a year. The $180-billion plant is schedule to begin operation next year.

The Scottish activist said Japan already has a 45-ton stockpile of plutonium and could rapidly develop a large atomic arsenal if it felt justified.

``There is a big question mark over what Japan would do in the case of a North Korean nuclear test,’’ he said, adding that Japanese politicians who want the country to take a more active defense posture might use North Korea as an excuse.

But Burnie, who has worked for Greenpeace for 15 years, also expressed concerns about South Korea’s ``unclear history’’ of nuclear development.

Seoul acknowledged last year that scientists at a government-run institute conducted sensitive experiments involving the separation of small amounts of uranium in 2000 and plutonium extraction in 1982.

``Undoubtedly the research unveiled last year was linked to a military program,’’ he claimed.

Seoul has denied the tests being part of a secret nuclear weapons program and it escaped sanctions after a International Atomic Energy Agency investigation into the revelations.

Burnie said South Korea, which is currently not allowed to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, may also seek to do away with the restriction when it renegotiates its nuclear agreement with the United States in 2013.

Seoul could argue that reprocessing is the only answer to dealing with its spent fuel, which is projected to total 15,000 tons by 2015, he said.

Burnie argued that the nuclear energy programs of South Korea and Japan are linked to North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions, which would not have been possible without outside assistance to develop a civilian program first.

``The prognosis for this whole region is not good,’’ he said.

His warning comes as delegations from around the world opened a month-long review of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) at U.N. headquarters in New York on Monday.

Burnie was pessimistic about hopes that the review process could strengthen the increasingly fragile international agreement.

``The NPT is not going to fall apart, but it may become less and less relevant,’’ he said.

rjs@koreatimes.co.kr