Atomic team departs with uranium sample

A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency left South Korea yesterday with half of the enriched uranium produced in 2000 by Korean scientists. They will be looking for indications that it might have been produced for weapons use. “Five of the seven officials left on Saturday with 0.1 gram of enriched uranium,” an official at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute in Daejeon said yesterday. He said the other two officials left yesterday, after inspecting a now-closed research reactor in Seoul. Worried about perceptions that the team wanted the material because it believes the worst of Seoul, a Ministry of Science and Technology official said yesterday, “It is basic cooperation for us to provide a part of the enriched uranium.” Seoul has said the enriched uranium experiment was conducted with the intention of seeing if the Korean team could make uranium usable in nuclear power plants, a concentration of the U-235 isotope far below that necessary for weapons. Persons familiar with such technology said it would take two or three months for the agency to analyze the sample. They said a report by the agency would probably not be released until near the end of the year. A Japanese newspaper, the Daily Yomiuri, yesterday quoted Chang In-soon, president of the institute, as saying three such experiments were conducted in 2000. The institute did not directly address that comment, but said that the 0.2 grams of enriched uranium Seoul has declared as having was the entire amount it possessed. by Shin Jae-woo