7 Apr (NucNet): The US Department of Energy has suspended a number of joint civil nuclear energy projects with Russia because of Russia’s “actions in the Ukraine”, Russian state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom has announced.
Rosatom said in a statement that the move affected “certain joint projects” between the two countries and “specifically refers to a number of scheduled technical meetings on scientific topics”.
Rosatom said it considers this move “a mistake that contradicts the constructive atmosphere that has built up in relations with the US Department of Energy in recent years”.
Nuclear energy requires a responsible and professional approach on the part of all participants in terms of international cooperation, Rosatom said. “Politics should have no place in this field,” the statement said.
The statement added: “Rosatom stresses that any attempts to impose unilateral restrictions in this area will affect the initiators of such moves first.”
In September 2013, Rosatom and the DOE signed an agreement to establish 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 DOE said the agreement would 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.
Meanwhile, a TNS Gallup survey commissioned by Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat showed that almost 50 percent of Finns do not want Rosatom to build the Hanhikivi-1 nuclear reactor in Finland.
The newspaper said the crisis in Ukraine and Crimea has resulted in Finns having “second thoughts” about the construction of a nuclear power plant using Russian technology.
