South Korea and the United States have agreed on a two-year extension to a civilian nuclear pact that Seoul wants amended to allow it to produce its own nuclear fuel, officials said Wednesday. The current pact, signed in 1974, had been due to expire next year. The extension was agreed to allow more negotiations on the heated topic of allowing the South to reprocess spent fuel rods. "The two sides reached a temporary agreement on extending the current accord by two years on the grounds that they need more time," Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Tai-Young told reporters.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said it would take ownership of 2,950 kg of waste plutonium that it has been storing on behalf of European utilities and may reprocess it into fuel for a planned new generation of nuclear plants. The ownership change does not mean that more nuclear fuel will be brought into Britain, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said.

By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA (Reuters) - Radioactive gases that could have come from North Korea's nuclear test in February have unexpectedly been detected, a global monitoring body said on Tuesday, possibly providing the first "smoking gun" evidence of the explosion. But the April 9 measurement - almost two months after Pyongyang said it had carried out the underground detonation - gave no indication of whether plutonium or highly enriched uranium was used, it said.

LONDON (Reuters) - The government said on Monday it would sell some or all of its 33 percent stake in Urenco, the world's second-largest vendor of nuclear fuel. Three countries hold equal stakes in the security-sensitive uranium enrichment concern - Britain, the Netherlands and Germany, whose share is held by utilities E.ON and RWE. Urenco is estimated to be worth up to 10 billion euros (8.5 billion pounds) and several buyers have been reported to be ready to bid for a stake.