20.12.2006 // Press-service of Rosatom

About the Russian-American plan of action for developing global and bilateral cooperation in the sphere of nuclear power engineering

In early 2006 the presidents of the Russian Federation and the United States appeared with individual initiatives for developing the world nuclear power engineering for ensuring safe sustainable development in the world with simultaneous nonproliferation guarantees.

Considering the similarity of the final goals and some solutions of their initiatives, the Russian and US presidents decided to formulate a joint attitude towards the peaceful use of nuclear power and expressed commitment for long-term cooperation towards nuclear power sector development. During the G8 meeting in St. Petersburg July 15 2006 the Russian and US presidents instructed their governments to set up a Russian-US task force for drafting bilateral plan of action for implementing cooperation in the nuclear power sector.

On Dec 15, 2006, the head of Rosatom Sergey Kiriyenko and US Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman submitted to President Putin and President Bush the task force’s joint report “Bilateral Plan of Action for Developing Global and Bilateral Cooperation in the Sphere of Nuclear Power Engineering.” The report lays the foundations of further bilateral cooperation in designing and introducing nuclear power technologies aimed at promoting the sustainable and safe use of nuclear power by Russia and the US and worldwide. At the same time, the report provides for specific ways of strengthening the nonproliferation regime and effective solutions to the problem of radioactive waste treatment.

Kiriyenko says that “only the collective effort of the countries possessing the complete nuclear power production cycle and high technologies can solve the problem of access of all states to the benefits of the nuclear energy market. The development of Russian-US relations in the nuclear power sector is an important step towards consolidating international efforts for developing nuclear power technologies of the future and ensuring the accessibility of the world nuclear power sector for all countries concerned.”

In their report the sides express joint commitment to work out a single concept of global nuclear power engineering development as a basis of further cooperation. The sides formulate the key directions of their cooperation:

Designing exportable small- and medium-capacity reactors, with strong safety and nonproliferation guarantees;

Applying upgraded fast-breeder reactors;

Designing and demonstrating new types of nuclear fuel for fast breeder reactors and technologies of their production;

Designing and demonstrating improved methods of nuclear waste recycling, fractionation, transmutation and isolation technologies;

Developing a safety and nonproliferation concept, methodology and technologies.

Based on these priorities, the report specifies a number of short-term projects, to be implemented starting from 2007, and formulates a plan of bilateral actions, to be carried out by the Russian-US task force.

The task force is co-chaired by Deputy Head of Rosatom Nikolay Spasskiy and US Assistant Secretary for Energy Dennis Spurgeon and comprises representatives of Rosatom, Rostekhnadzor, Russian Defense and Foreign Ministries, US Department of Energy, National Security Administration, Department of State and National Laboratory.

The technical support will be provided by a team of experts from Russian, organizations, US Department of Energy and specialists involved in the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership program of the US National Laboratory.