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The inspection team of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) left Korea on Saturday and Sunday with about half of the 0.2g of uranium enriched by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) in 2000. This ended the inspection that started on Aug. 29, and now attention is drawn to the results of an analysis that will be conducted by the IAEA.
The Ministry of Science and Technology said Sunday that all seven of the IAEA inspectors who carried out investigation into the KAERI for a week had left Korea by Sunday. Five of them left Saturday with a plastic bottle of 0.1g of enriched uranium dissolved in nitric acid.
The other two surveyed a dismantled research reactor kept in the old KAERI building in Taereung, Seoul before leaving the country Sunday. The reactor was the first one introduced in Korea when the KAERI was established in 1962 and was dismantled in early 1990.
Cho Chung-won, atomic energy director at the Science and Technology Ministry, said, "The inspection team expressed their gratitude for the help of the government and KAERI. I think there will be no problems in the future." The IAEA will conduct an analysis of the enriched uranium they brought from Korea to discover its elements and enrichment level, and report to the board of directors whether their analysis is in accordance with the Korean government's report.
Cho said, "Because the IAEA will repeat the analysis several times, the final result is expected to come out in two or three months." If the result is not different from the KAERI's report, details will not be made public. But if it is different, it would be inevitable to reveal it to decide whether another inspection is needed or not.
In connection with the report by some foreign newspapers that Korea had enriched uranium three times, the KAERI said, "It just means that we turned off the laser research equipment and turned it on again three times between January and February 2000. There is no significant meaning to that."
(Lee Young-wan, ywlee@chosun.com )
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