원자력의 평화적 이용을 위한 국제협력에 관한 미국 원자력법 제123조 고찰: 한미원자력협력협정 개정을 둘러싼 법적 쟁점을 중심으로

초록

South Korea and the United States have been negotiating the replacement of their 1974 civil nuclear cooperation agreement that expires in March 2014. In the last couple of years, concerns have been mounting because of difficulties in concluding the successor agreement. With the clock running out on the current agreement, and the two sides still divided on a central issue, they decided earlier 2013 to extend it for two more years, giving them more time to find a solution and to ensure that nuclear cooperation can continue without interruption. There is one area that has been the focus of disagreement between Korean and US negotiators: Korea would like programmatic consent for 1) enrichment of any natural uranium supplied by the US, and 2) reprocessing (called pyroprocessing) of US-origin materials to reuse them in its peaceful nuclear power reactors. Because of the proliferation risks that nuclear technology poses, the US strongly opposes to the spread of the enrichment and reprocessing technologies, particularly in areas of proliferation concern and instability such as the Korean Peninsula. How they deal with this issue could have important implications not only for their nuclear trade but also for the US-Korea-alliance, their future peaceful nuclear cooperation agreements, the global nonproliferation regime, and the North Korean nuclear threat. Therefore, this paper aims to scrutinize the Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) and its application, which is not often done by Korean legal scholars. This is because in order for the United States to engage in civilian nuclear cooperation with other states, it must conclude a framework agreement that meets specific requirements under Section 123 of the AEA. These have been nicknamed “123 Agreements” after the section of the AEA that requires them. The AEA also provides for export control licensing procedures and criteria for terminating cooperation. Congressional review is required for 123 agreements; the AEA establishes special parliamentary procedures by which Congress may act on a proposed agreement. Hopefully, these analyses will serve to better understand the situation and to shed lights on how to work towards a solution, and towards an amicable agreement.

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