NEWS |
round up
NEW BUILD FRANCE’S EDF, US-based Westinghouse and Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power have agreed to take part in the tender to build a new unit at Dukovany in the Czech Republic.
FUGRO HAS COMPLETED a complex six-month offshore site characterisation project for Turkish nuclear energy company EUAS International ICC on the Sinop peninsula where Turkey plans to build its second nuclear plant.
AT ROOPPUR 1 in Bangladesh, installation of the metal structures of the dome part of the inner containment shell has been completed.
CHINA’S HONGYANHE 5, a 1080MWe domestically-designed ACPR1000, has completed commissioning tests and met the conditions for entering commercial operation, China General Nuclear said.
BALFOUR BEATTY HAS cast its last nuclear grade reinforced concrete segment at Hinkely Point C. Since production began in 2019, over 38,000 segments have been produced to the highest nuclear specification.
CIVIL WORKS HAVE begun at Turkey’s Akkuyu 4, being built by Rosatom under a permit issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Authority of Turkey on 30 June.
RUSATOM OVERSEAS HAS received a licence from regulator Rostechnadzor for the construction of small nuclear plant in Yakutia.
OPERATION JAPAN’S KANSAI ELECTRIC Power Co said it will restart Takahama 1 in June 2023. The plant, which is over 40 years old and has been idle since 2011, was approved for restart by Fukui Governor Tatsuji Sugimoto in April.
THE US NUCLEAR Regulatory Commission (NRC) has accepted for review an application from Duke Energy Carolinas requesting an additional 20 years for the previously-renewed operating licences for Oconee 1-3.
CHINA NATIONAL NUCLEAR Corporation has launched a district heating demonstration project at the Qinshan nuclear plant in Zhejiang Province. The project is being carried out cooperation with the Haiyan County Government.
US-BASED JACOBS has been selected to carry out essential engineering modifications as part of a $1.2m programme to extend the operating life of South Africa’s Koeberg nuclear plant.
4 | October 2021 |
www.neimagazine.com
Above: Rafael Mariano Grossi briefs International Press on Iran Photo Credit: Dean Calma/IAEA
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on 12 September published a Joint Statement by the vice-president and the head of Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI), Mohammad Eslami, and IAEA director general Rafael Grossi following talks in Tehran. The statement said: “In this meeting
the parties recalled and reaffirmed the spirit of cooperation and mutual trust and its continuation and emphasised on the necessity of addressing the relevant issues in a constructive atmosphere and exclusively in a technical manner.” Grossi’s visit came after talks between
major world powers to save the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal became deadlocked. Under the JCPOA between Iran the P5+1 group of countries (the USA, UK, France, Russia, and China plus Germany), Iran had undertaken to limit its nuclear development in return for the lifting of sanctions. However, Iran began to gradually roll back on the restrictions imposed by the JCPOA after former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal and reimposed sanctions in 2018, including oversight by the IAEA. US President Joe Biden has been seeking to reinstate the JCPOA, and indirect talks began in April. The last round of talks ended in June with no date set for their resumption, pending the inauguration of Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s new President, replacing Hassan Rouhani. It was Grossi’s first trip to Tehran during the new administration of President Raisi, who appointed Eslami as the AEOI head in August. A law passed by Iran’s parliament in
December 2020 mandated the Iranian government to stop implementing the IAEA’s Additional Protocol unless US sanctions were lifted by 23 February. Iran and the IAEA then reached a three-month temporary agreement in February whereby Iran would store video records of cameras monitoring its nuclear sites and deliver those records to the IAEA only after US sanctions are lifted. Iran extended the
continue cooperation IAEA and Iran to
agreement for one more month on 23 May. Since then, Iran has continued to steadily develop its nuclear programme resulting in IAEA reports expressing concern. The Tehran meeting came days after two
new confidential IAEA reports were leaked to the media. The reports said Iran had failed to adequately cooperate on the agency’s recording equipment, some of which may have been destroyed after an incident, while it is resuming high enrichment of uranium, and has failed to provided details of nuclear materials found at several locations. Iran responded to the reports by calling on the agency to maintain its independence and refrain from political actions. The Tehran meeting was facilitated by
Russia, which is seeking to prevent a resolution censuring Iran at a forthcoming IAEA board of governors meeting, which could derail a resumption of negotiations on the JCPOA. President Raisi earlier in September warned that any censure of Iran could negatively affect a return to the negotiations which have been suspended since July. The joint statement said: “In the framework
of the existing cooperation, the two sides decided to maintain their mutual interactions and meetings at relevant levels. To this end, the vice-president and the head of AEOI will meet the IAEA director general at the sidelines of the General Conference, and the IAEA director general will visit Tehran in the near future to hold high level consultations with the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran with the aim of enhancing cooperation between Iran and the IAEA in different fields and discussing current issues of mutual interest.” It added: “IAEA’s inspectors are permitted to service the identified equipment and replace their storage media which will be kept under the joint IAEA and AEOI seals in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The way and the timing are agreed by the two sides.”
On his return to Vienna on 12 September,
Grossi held a press conference in which he said it was a “very short but constructive trip” which “helped to resolve outstanding issues”. He noted that the Agency’s main concern was “a major communications breakdown which we cannot afford having so many important issues to solve”. He confirmed that Iran had agreed to a complete servicing of the monitoring equipment including replacement of broken cameras “to keep the information needed to maintain continuity of knowledge”. Grossi acknowledged that there were
outstanding issues which needed to be solved and that he intended to discuss these with the new administration in Iran at talks in Vienna and during another trip to Tehran. ■
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