South Korea joins GNEP

Tuesday, 11 December 2007 South Korea became the 19th member of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) after the Ministry of Science and Industry signed the Statement of Principles on 10 December.

Kim Young-sik, head of the ministry's atomic energy bureau, said: "By joining GNEP, South Korea can maximize its interest in critical decision making processes related to atomic energy issues, and can use its membership to bolster exports to countries interested in nuclear power generation."

The USA, China, France, Japan and Russia became members at the first ministerial meeting in May 2007. At the second GNEP ministerial meeting in Vienna in September, Australia, Bulgaria, Ghana, Hungary, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Ukraine agreed to join, taking membership to 16 countries. In November, both Italy and Canada announced they would sign the GNEP statement of principles.

The only major nuclear nations remaining outside of the GNEP project are now the UK and India. The UK has so far participated in GNEP meetings as an observer, but is expected to make a decision on joining when government policy matures. Whether India can participate in the initiative prior to the completion of the pending US-India nuclear trade deal, which would put most of the country's nuclear power reactors under IAEA safeguards, is not clear.

The GNEP initiative was launched by US President George Bush in January 2006. Under GNEP, so-called 'fuel-cycle' nations would provide assured supplies of nuclear fuel to client nations, which would generate electricity before returning the used fuel. It would then undergo advanced reprocessing so that uranium and plutonium it contained could be recycled in advanced nuclear power reactors. Waste volumes would be greatly reduced by this process, and nuclear materials would never be outside the strictest controls, overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In November, prior to South Korea agreeing to join, it was announced that GNEP studies into the cores of very high-temperature reactors and 'advanced burner reactors' are to be carried out by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (Kaeri) under a deal with General Atomics (GA). GA is leading one of the four consortia selected by the US Department of Energy (DoE) to develop technology required to implement GNEP. GA's deal with Kaeri is worth $105,000, which comes from the $1.6 million the DoE awarded to GA'sconsortium in October. The work builds on earlier cooperation between Kaeri and GA, based around its very high-temperature helium-cooled GT-MHR reactor design.

Further information

Global Nuclear Energy Partnership website

WNA's Cooperation in the Nuclear Power Industry information paper
WNA's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership information paper
WNA's Nuclear Power in Korea information paper

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