17 Sept (NucNet): An agreement signed between Russia and the US will open “broad opportunities” for establishing contact between laboratories and institutes in the two countries to carry out research and development in areas of nuclear energy such as fast reactors and fuel irradiation.
The agreement, signed yesterday in Vienna, Austria, by Rosatom director-general Sergei Kiriyenko and US energy secretary Ernest Moniz, also regulates access to research facilities, a Rosatom statement said.
The US said the agreement, signed on the margins of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s general conference, provides the legal framework necessary to expand cooperation between US and Russian nuclear research laboratories, institutes, and facilities in a broad range of areas, including nuclear technology, nonproliferation, fundamental and applied science, energy, and environment.
The US Department of Energy said the agreement will complement provisions of the US-Russian Agreement for Cooperation in the Field of Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy, which came into force in January 2011 and opened new opportunities to work together on a wide range of issues in this sphere.
The DOE said potential projects covered by the agreement could include international safeguards, establishment of a fast research reactor research centre, irradiation of fuels and materials in the fast-spectrum research reactor BOR-60, and defence from asteroids.
Rosatom said areas of cooperation include the design of nuclear power plants and new nuclear reactor fuels; nuclear science; the use of nuclear and radiation technologies in medicine and industry; and radioactive waste management.
The US and Russia are equal partners under the agreement, with each country bearing its own costs.
Mr Moniz said the agreement supports president Barack Obama’s nonproliferation and climate priorities by providing “a venue for scientific collaboration and relationship-building between the US and Russian research and technical communities”.
