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In this report, Peter Hayes and Roger Cavazos “examine one North Korean account of the limited war it might fight to occupy Seoul, including the use of nuclear weapons or other unspecified WMD to neutralize American forces. We find that while this account makes for fine propaganda, when viewed through the lens of conventional capabilities, the plan is mainly smoke and mirrors. Nonetheless, if this account is indicative of the belief system of North Korea’s leadership, then it is truly alarming. It suggests that North Korea still adheres to military strategies and tactics that failed in the Korean War, and would fail again, only faster, should war break out in Korea. Moreover, it suggests a fantastic belief that somehow early escalation to nuclear war could make possible a conventional pre-emptive attack on Seoul.”

Peter Hayes is director of Nautilus Institute and Professor of International Relations at RMIT University in Melbourne. Roger Cavazos is an Associate of Nautilus Institute and retired US military intelligence officer.

In this report Jungmin Kang reviews the current status of and future prospects for nuclear power in the Republic of Korea. The ROK’s current nuclear capacity of 21.7 GWe will, under current plans, be approximately doubled by 2030. Given the current lack of pool storage capacity, Kang asserts that spent fuel storage in the ROK will become worse in the near future and that decisions regarding the interim storage of spent fuel will play key roles in shaping nuclear fuel cycle activities and development in South Korea.

Dr. Jungmin Kang is currently a visiting professor at Lee Byong Whi Nuclear Energy Policy Center, Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).

The purpose of this report is to provide policy-makers and other interested parties with an overview of the demand for and supply of the various forms of energy used in the DPRK in six years during the last two decades:

• 1990, the year before much of the DPRK’s economic and technical support from the Soviet Union was withdrawn;
• 1996, thought by some to be one of the most meager years of the difficult economic 1990s in the DPRK; and
• 2000, a year that has been perceived by some observers as a period of modest economic “recovery” in the DPRK, as well as a marker of the period before the start, in late 2002, of a period of renewed political conflict between the DPRK, the United States, and it neighbors in Northeast Asia over the DPRK’s nuclear weapons development program; and
• 2005, also a year in which observers have again noted an upward trend in some aspects of the DPRK economy, as well as the most recent year for which any published estimates on the DPRK’s energy sector and economy are available.
• 2008, the last year in which the DPRK received heavy fuel oil from its negotiating partners in the Six-Party talks; and
• 2009, the most recent year for which we have analyzed the DPRK’s energy sector.

David von Hippel is an Associate of the Nautilus Institute. Peter Hayes is the Executive Director of the Nautilus Institute.

Richard Tanter examines Ball’s writings on these facilities, setting them in the wider context of Ball’s work on nuclear targeting, the transnational UKUSA intelligence and security community, and the possibilities and limits of self reliance in Australian defence. Reviewing developments in US-Australian “joint facilities” in Australia in the past decade, the paper examines the asymmetrical alliance cooperation involved in the technological, organisational and doctrinal integration of Australian defence forces with those of the United States. It then argues for a reconsideration of the balance of costs and benefits of the US facilities and the accompanying alliance grand bargain. The paper concludes with a re-consideration of Ball’s reluctant conclusion to the question of whether, on balance, the retention of the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap is in the Australian national interest and the wider human interest.

Richard Tanter is Senior Research Associate at the Nautilus Institute, and professor in the School of Social and Political Studies at the University of Melbourne. Email: rtanter@nautilus.org.

This summary report is based on the New Approach to Security in Northeast Asia: Breaking the Gridlock workshop, which convened senior international experts in the field of security in Washington, D.C. on October 9th and 10th, 2012. The purpose of this meeting was to access Morton Halperin’s proposal that establishing a Northeast Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (NEA-NWFZ) would strengthen peace and security in the region, reinforce the nuclear non-proliferation regime and facilitate nuclear disarmament on the Korean Peninsula. The workshop built upon the findings of the East Asia Nuclear Security Workshop in 2011 to further explore the proposal’s limits, weaknesses and possible means of implementation.

Binoy Kampmark is a Lecturer at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Peter Hayes is the Executive Director of the Nautilus Institute and Richard Tanter is an Associate of the Nautilus Institute.

Although China’s nuclear power industry is relatively young, and the management of its spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste is not yet a major concern, China’s commitment to nuclear energy and its rapid pace of nuclear generation capacity development require detailed analyses and planning of its future spent fuel management and nuclear waste policies. Specially, China is moving forward on its commitment to operate a closed nuclear fuel cycle, a policy that was first articulated in the 1980s. Figuring out how to manage and store the high-level nuclear waste resulting from reprocessing—a necessary part of a closed nuclear fuel cycle—could be a challenge for China.

This report reviews China’s spent fuel management policy, including its plans for reprocessing, including and China’s nuclear waste management plan, and explores the feasibility of deep borehole disposal (DBD) as an alternative to at-reactor, centralized surface- and near-surface storage, or mine geologic storage of spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste.

Yun Zhou is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program.

Liu Xuegang writes, “Experience with spent fuel management is limited in China. No authorized roadmap or clear decision on the back end of nuclear fuel cycle has yet been developed and approved. Thanks to the present relatively small quantity of spent fuel in storage at China’s nuclear plants, it appears that there will be no critical pressure on the development of spent fuel transportation, interim storage, large-scale reprocessing and final disposal infrastructure for a number of years. The difficulty and uncertainty of development of nuclear power and nuclear fuel cycle facilities, however, have been well-proved worldwide in the past. China’s strategy of spent fuel management policy should be determined soon, and should be based on a comprehensive and scientific planning process that allows consideration of all reasonable options, issues, and points of view.”

Xuegang Liu is a Doctor at the Nuclear Chemistry and Technology Division at the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P. R. China.