2011-03-03 13:32

SEOUL - South Korea and the United States on Thursday began a second round of talks on revising a nuclear cooperation pact due to expire in March 2014.

Robert Einhorn, the US State Department's special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control, met with his counterpart Cho Hyun, former deputy foreign minister for multilateral and global affairs.

The nuclear cooperation accord between the two sides, signed in 1974, bans South Korea from reprocessing spent oil from civilian nuclear plants.

South Korea has been seeking to revise terms of the agreement as its storage facilities for spent fuel from nuclear power plants in the country are expected to reach capacity in 2016.

At the first round of talks held in October last year, the two sides agreed to launch joint research into Seoul's demand to adopt "pyroprocessing" technology, considered by some to be less conducive to proliferation.

"In today's talks, we plan to assess the outcome of the first round of talks and efforts that have since been made, including working-level meetings on pyroprocessing," said a senior foreign ministry official quoted by the Yonhap News Agency. "We also plan to discuss ways to boost industrial cooperation that would be a win-win for both sides."

The two sides will also try to draw up a broad framework of the envisioned agreement and discuss ways to move future talks forward, Yonhap reported, adding that the reprocessing issue will not be a key topic in this week's talks.