US, Japan to collaborate on nuclear plants, clean fuels

By Anne K Walters Jan 10, 2007, 0:58 GMT

Washington - The United States and Japan are developing a joint nuclear energy plan to collaborate on research and construction of new nuclear power plants, US and Japanese officials said Tuesday in Washington.

US Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman and Akira Amari, Japanese minister of economy, trade and industry, met in Washington to discuss energy cooperation.

The officials said at a press conference that they intend to announce a plan by April to address research and development under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, the construction of new nuclear power plants and regulatory and nonproliferation-related nuclear exchanges.

Bodman said that specific plans are to be developed over the next three months but will likely include tapping Japanese engineers to work on new nuclear power plants in the United States.

He said that Japanese scientists and nuclear engineers would lend technical expertise in advanced, so-called fast reactors, which use nuclear fuel more efficiently. Fast reactors yield more energy while producing significantly less radioactive waste to be disposed.

Japan is in the process of developing such reactors to be put into use on a trial basis in 2008, Amari said.

'In Japan we have among the greatest scientists and engineers in this field,' Bodman said.

In the United States, 103 nuclear reactors supply nearly 20 per cent of the nation's electricity, but since the 1979 US accident at Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl in 1986 in the Soviet Union, only one US plant has come on line in 1996.

Growing concern about energy self-sufficiency and global warming from fossil fuels have recently boosted interest in nuclear power, and the Nuclear Energy Institute trade group said in December that 18 new plants were in the works in the United States.

Japan has more than 50 nuclear reactors, generating one third of the country's power, according to the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan. It ranks third worldwide in installed nuclear capacity behind the US and France.

Bodman and Amari also discussed clean-coal initiatives and joint efforts in China and India to promote alternative energy sources and energy conservation.

Japan agreed to join FutureGen, a billion-dollar government- industry project to build a coal-fired power plant using previously untried technology to eliminate greenhouse-gas emissions. The Asian nation will contribute research and funding on carbon-capture technology.

Speaking through a translator, Amari called the project a 'very dramatic and epoch-making proposal.'

The two countries agreed to encourage emerging countries toward transparency in their energy systems.

Amari praised a December meeting of energy ministers from five of the world's largest economies - China, the United States, India, Japan and South Korea - as a model of cooperation among countries.

Amari met with US Trade Representative Susan Schwab, and Bodman discussed energy policy with Japanese Finance Minister Koji Omi.