The Korea Peninsula Energy Development Organization and the Korea Electric Power Corporation of South Korea have taken first steps to implement an agreement to end the project to build light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea.

The international consortium's board of directors met last week in New York to decide detailed schedules and principles to shut down the light-water reactor project.

Last month, KEDO and KEPCO signed a 14-point agreement under which KEPCO, the project's prime contractor, will bear all expenses for termination. But KEPCO will maintain rights to project-related facilities and equipment that were being built outside the North.

The project to construct two reactors in North Korea had been suspended since November 2003, after the second nuclear standoff erupted the year before.

More than one-and-a-half billion dollars have gone into the project, 70 percent of which came from Seoul. The total cost amounts to two-point-two billion dollars including heavy fuel oil provided by the United States and operational expenses for the KEDO consortium.

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