Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) left in Seoul on September 26 after concluding a week-long investigation into South Korea's past controversial nuclear experiments.

A five-member team from the UN nuclear watchdog have taken with them about 20 samples from nuclear material and waste left over by the experiments in 1982 and 2000, South Korean national Yonhap News Agency quoted South Korean government officials as saying.

The team inspected the (South) Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI), the country's main nuclear research center, in Daejeon city, about 160 kilometers south of Seoul, and another nuclear research center in central Seoul.

This is the second IAEA investigation in less than one month over the two nuclear research facilities, which have been at the center of an international controversy for the past few weeks ever since its scientists were found to have conducted two controversial laboratory experiments, one in 1982 and the other in 2000, without reporting to the government.

The experiments resulted in tiny amounts of plutonium and enriched uranium, the two main types of fissile material used in nuclear weapons.

"The government showed the IAEA inspectors what they wanted to see. They thanked the government for its cooperation." an official at the Ministry of Science and Technology was quoted by Yonhap as saying.

In addition to taking the samples, an inspector also visited an area named Goesan close to Daejeon, the unnamed official added.

An uranium reserve of 120 million tons was discovered in the Goesan area in the 1970s, but the government decided not to develop it as a mine because of low economic viability, the official explained.

South Korean government admitted earlier this month that two groups of scientists at the KAERI conducted extraction of plutonium experiment and separation of uranium experiment in 1982 and 2000 respectively without reporting to the government.

However, Seoul has repeatedly stressed that the two one-off experiments were purely academic activities that had nothing to do with nuclear weapons.

Source: Xinhua