He told the audience about the State Corporation’s building NPPs inside and outside Russia, confirmed the readiness to follow the closed fuel cycle direction and usage of fast reactors; the Director also noted the important role of the IAEA in the world’s nuclear power development.
Then Russian delegation had a series of meetings and consultations, including negotiations with Americans, resulting in signing a cooperation agreement between the two countries. The new document determines three main directions: new technologies in nuclear power sphere, safety and waste management, developing non-energetic nuclear technologies.
According to Vyacheslav Pershukov, the Director of the Innovations Management Block, shortly a bilateral working group is going to be formed in order to highlight the specific projects for cooperation by the end of the year. Thus, while preparing the agreement, one highly important problem, concerning the result of intellectual cooperation, was successfully solved. “We found mechanisms to protect intellectual property well, taking into consideration national, state and author’s interests. We are going to try them in practice shortly” – Pershukov promised. “We’ve been discussing the agreement for 5 years, doing special preparations for the recent two years”, – specified Kiriyenko, telling the mass media about the partnership details. – The planned collaboration is on the level of the USA national labs, our nuclear centers and institutes. We were to agree on the points of Privacy Policy, protection of information and intellectual property. The agreement is focused, and the fact that we have signed it in pre-agreed terms, without any time shifts, shows the high level of confidence between Russia and the USA at this point”.
On the margins of the conference there was a working meeting between the head of Rosatom and Bernard Bigot, the head of CEA (France). The parties agreed that Russia would supply fuel for the Jules Horowitz research reactor being built in Cadarache in France to replace its out-of-date predecessors. The start-up is planned for the next year. The installment is meant for testing materials and studying of PWR technologies (analog of the Russian VVER).
As a matter of fact, supplying fuel to the world’s research reactors (quite numerous these days) is the topic gaining popularity, since American General Atomic has recently closed its fuel line, believing it to be unprofitable. Research reactor assemblies are piece-goods and as a rule their owners can’t pay the full price of production. Now the IAEA is looking for options in this complicated situation, among all discussing the whole thing with Rosatom. Vyacheslav Pershukov cautiously hints that consultations are on.
Plans and expectations
Indeed they spoke a lot about expectations in atomic energy development. In spite of the Fukushima issue and economic crisis, states don’t refuse to construct NPPs. The wide program of Rosatom’s meetings in the margins of the IAEA conference also illustrates this point.
Thus, according to Sergey Kiriyenko, they managed to discuss the Kudankulam progress of work with the Indian representatives. In coming days the steam to turbine will be done at unit 1, which means, the plant is about to produce stable current for the country’s power system.
The Bangladeshi representatives invited the head of Rosatom to visit the Ruppur NPP site at the beginning of October, where at this time the construction works are going to begin. Sergey Kiriyenko noted, that very soon, in a day or two, the first Bangladeshi students were coming to Russia to learn to operate the future plant.
There also were negotiations with the Ukrainian delegation. “Our nuclear fuel plant construction is going on as planned. We’ve discussed all the questions concerning the NPP building. Ukraine every day is coming closer to the moment when the program of constructing new plants is necessary to be started. This is a term of the nearest 4-5 years, not forgetting unit decommissioning”, said Rosatom’s General Director.
According to the IAEA estimations, even in the most pessimistic scenario of the industry development, the total capacity of NPP should grow by 14%, against the backdrop of decommissioning (the most optimistic one would make it almost double). Those are numbers mentioned by Alexander Bychkov, the IAEA Deputy Director. Turkey, Belarus, Bangladesh, Jordan, UAE and Poland, the industry newcomers, are ready to follow the chosen direction. Besides, according to Bychkov, Kazachstan is ready to return to discussion concerning the NPP construction and present a long-range site in June.
On the whole, as they say in Rosatom, after the IAEA summer forum in Saint-Petersburg the Russia’s authority in the nuclear world has strengthened a great deal. Let us remind our readers, that in autumn 2014 another IAEA conference, this time of expert-level, dedicated to thermonuclear fusion, will be held in Saint-Petersburg. While a little earlier, in July, Russia is going to celebrate the 60 years anniversary of the first world’s NPP start-up (the Obninsk plant).
