Light shines again on S.Korean power plan for North

SEOUL, Nov 7 (Reuters) After languishing in the shadows for the past year, South Korea's pledge to provide North Korea with electricity in exchange for winding up its nuclear arms programme is emerging again as a bright idea.

When Pyongyang agreed last week to return to the stalled six-country talks on ending its nuclear ambitions, the chief US envoy to the negotiations said the impoverished communist country should not forget South Korea's pledge of energy aid.

In June 2005, Seoul agreed to provide 2,000 megawatts of electricity -- roughly equal to its neighbour's current output -- as long as North Korea scraps its nuclear weapons programme.

''North Korea's electric situation has only gotten worse as more time has passed by,'' said Kim Kyoung-sool, an economist specialising in North Korea's energy policies at the South's Korea Energy Economics Institute.

Impoverished North Korea cannot keep its factories running at night because its electricity plants generate little power.

Its grid, part of which was built during Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945, is a shambles.

Satellite pictures of the peninsula taken a night show a brightly illuminated southern half and the North in almost complete darkness.

Kim said that with transport hampered by crumbling roads, it has become difficult to bring the coal needed by power plants. ''It's impossible for North Korea to recover its energy-generating capabilities on its own in the short term,'' he said.

The South Korean government has said it would have excess capacity of 5,000 MW to 6,000 MW by 2008 even after setting aside mandatory reserves of 17 per cent.

It would only need added transmission networks and related facilities costing an estimated 1.5 trillion won to send the electricity North.

WEAPONS FOR WATTS South Korea's state power monopoly KEPCO has said it would not be a technical challenge to transmit the energy to the North and it would take about three years to start the flow.

South Korea would finance its energy aid plan from the 2.4 billion dollars it had allocated to build light-water nuclear reactors that had been part of a 1994 deal, which has since collapsed.

North Korea has said it still wants the reactors, from which -- unlike its current nuclear plant -- it would be hard to extract fissile material for weapons.

Last year, it demanded that the US build one for it before it would even consider taking apart its nuclear arms programme.

It takes at least nine years and costs 2-3 billion dollars on average to build a modern nuclear power plant with a standard capacity of about 1,000 megawatts, South Korean energy officials said.

But experts said there is a major snag. For it to function, the North would have to completely rebuild its electricity grid which in its current form could not cope with the supply from a light-water reactor.

REUTERS BDP VC0915