President Donald Trump with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung during a ceremony at the Gyeongju National Museum, South Korea, October 29, 2025. The United States and South Korea agreed to pursue expanded South Korean civil uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing rights, but talks have stalled. South Korea can revive talks with Washington by emphasizing energy security, nonproliferation, and its strategic value to the US nuclear partnership. (The White House/Daniel Torok)

How to Revive US-South Korea Discussions on Nuclear Enrichment and Reprocessing

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South Korea can revive stalled nuclear talks with Washington by emphasizing energy security, nonproliferation, and its strategic value to the US nuclear partnership.

For decades, South Korea’s pursuit of a complete civil nuclear fuel cycle—specifically uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing (ENR)—has been a long-cherished ambition, strictly limited by Washington’s nonproliferation policies. A monumental breakthrough finally seemed to arrive in late 2025 during a bilateral summit between President Donald Trump and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung.

However, translating the historic political commitments of the November 2025 US-South Korea Joint Fact Sheet into actionable, legally binding frameworks has proven intensely difficult. Despite the resumption of working-level talks in June 2026, diplomatic discussions have largely lost their momentum. To understand how South Korea can revive these critical negotiations, it is necessary to examine why they stalled and what strategic levers Seoul can pull to secure its long-term nuclear sovereignty.

The 2025 US-South Korea Breakthrough: A Fleeting Victory?

Historically, the United States has maintained strict control over the dual-use technologies of the nuclear fuel cycle to prevent the global proliferation of fissile material. The revised 2015 US-South Korea 123 Agreement explicitly prohibited South Korea from enriching US-origin uranium above 20 percent and withheld advance consent for spent fuel reprocessing.

To explore a compromise, the two nations embarked on a decade-long Joint Fuel Cycle Study (JFCS) focused on pyroprocessing. Pyroprocessing is an advanced electrochemical technology designed to recycle spent nuclear fuel—thereby drastically reducing nuclear waste volume—without extracting the pure, weapons-grade plutonium required for a nuclear arsenal. Although the two governments officially endorsed the JFCS report in 2021, validating the technology’s feasibility to help manage South Korea’s massive........

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