South Korean officials pleased President Trump last month by presenting him with their nation’s highest honor and a replica of a gold crown. The next day he had a surprise for his hosts.
He gave the green light to South Korea’s long-cherished dream of deploying nuclear-powered attack submarines.
Washington helped build Seoul’s nuclear energy industry in the 1970s on the condition that it would not enrich uranium, even for peaceful purposes, without American approval.
Last month in Gyeongju, South Korea, President Lee Jae Myung made what appeared to be a compelling argument to Mr. Trump. South Korea wanted nuclear-powered attack subs to strengthen its defenses against North Korea and China and reduce the burden on allied U.S. forces, he said, but it needed American support in securing their fuel.
South Korea already runs a fleet of its own diesel-powered submarines, and experts say those can do the job around the Korean Peninsula. Still, Seoul has been gearing up to build nuclear-powered ones, which can stay underwater longer and move faster than the diesel version. They would not carry nuclear weapons, it said.
Washington’s longstanding stance on not allowing Seoul to enrich uranium or reprocess spent nuclear fuel was part of a strategy to contain the technology needed to make fuel for nuclear weapons. South Korea today has a fleet of 26 nuclear reactors, all powered by imported fuel.
Seoul now wants to enrich uranium on its own to build its own fuel supply chain and ensure its energy security. It is also running out of waste storage space at many plants and wants to reprocess the spent fuel for reuse and to reduce waste.
Many in South Korea support uranium enrichment for another reason.
They say that, like Japan and Germany, their country must gain “nuclear latency.” That means possessing the capacity to quickly produce nuclear weapons should the country decide that it could no longer trust the U.S. commitment to protect it from a nuclear attack from North Korea, or that staying under America’s so-called nuclear umbrella had become too costly.
Song Min-soon, a former foreign minister of South Korea, said that talks about nuclear-powered submarines were obscuring a more urgent need for South Korea to gain nuclear latency and provide more options for its diplomacy. If South Korea enriches uranium for nuclear power stations, the problem of nuclear sub fuel will also be resolved, he said.