Export of Radioactive Waste

[enielsen@webspun.com (Erik C. Nielsen)]

Reprinted direct from Mercury Mail

04:47 AM ET 01/20/97

Protests won't stop N.Korea nuclear deal - Taiwan

By Alice Hung
TAIPEI, Jan 20 (Reuter) - State utility Taiwan Power Co pledged on Monday to
press ahead with a controversial plan to ship nuclear waste to cash-starved
North Korea, despite vehement protests from South Korea.

``We negotiated the deal with North Korea. The South Korean side has nothing
to do with it,'' a Taipower official told Reuters by telephone.
             
``North Korea and South Korea are two difficult countries. I see no reason
why we should not go ahead with the deal.''
       
Taipower signed a contract on January 11 under which it can ship up to
200,000 barrels of nuclear waste to North Korea, a Stalinist recluse state
whose own nuclear programme has been at the centre of a political storm
through the 1990s.

Under the contract, Taipower plans to ship 60,000 barrels of waste in the
first two years.

Taipower declined to disclose financial terms, but Taiwan media said the
utility had agreed to pay impoverished Pyongyang US$1,150 for each barrel it
takes.

South Korea has urged Taiwan to cancel the contract, saying it feared the
deal would pollute the Korean peninsula with radioactive waste.

``We cannot help but express deep regret over Taiwan signing the contract
with North Korea, which has no transparency in the treatment of nuclear
wastes,'' a South Korean foreign ministry official said on January 16.

``We are again urging Taiwan not to go ahead with the contract,'' the
official added.
                                      
A Taiwan agent for the Pyongyang government in Taipei insisted South Korea
had no right to interfere in the deal.

``Our position is very simple -- this is a matter between Taiwan and North
Korea,'' Yang Chi-fan, director of Korea International Travel Co in Taiwan,
told Reuters by telephone.

``South Korea has no right to protest. This is not their business.''

Yang's private agency is authorised by Pyongyang to issue visas and promote
tourism in North Korea in the absence of formal diplomatic ties between
Taiwan and North Korea, which recognises the rival communist Chinese
government in Beijing.

North Korea's nuclear power programme caused international uproar in the
early 1990s. The United States and others alleged the programme aimed to
develop nuclear weapons.

A key concern was the lack of international inspections.

Pyongyang agreed to freeze and eventually junk the programme in a 1994 pact
with Washington, which would reciprocate with $4.5 billion in safer nuclear
technology and interim energy.

Since 1982, Taiwan has stored 97,672 barrels of nuclear waste at Lanyu,
nearing its capacity of 98,112 barrels.

Taipower has promised to remove all the nuclear waste in Lanyu by 2002 and
it has been seeking sites overseas, including China, the Marshall Islands
and Russia.

Taiwan has three nuclear power plants operating and a fourth under
construction in northern Taipei county.




My comment- Why don't we get rid of our waste at this rate rather than just
hand over aid.  Too pragmatic? 4.5 billion would dispose of a lot of waste.
What is the actual or estimated cost at WIPP?

Erik C. Nielsen
Heritage Environmental Services
Romeoville Illinois
620-378-2166

"If it isn't in writing, it didn't happen."
"Time, it's what keeps everything from happening at once."