July 2001
Russia, China to cooperate in nuclear projects
BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom; July 20, 2001
Text of report in English by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS[Posted 26/07/2001]
Moscow, 20 July: Russia and China are going to cooperate in designing a nuclear energy plant for spacecraft and in manufacture of the so-called MOX fuel, a mixture of plutonium and uranium.
The cooperation accord was made in Moscow on Friday [20 July] by Russian Nuclear Energy Minister Aleksandr Rumyantsev and the chief of China's State Committee for Science, Technology and Defence Industry, Liu Jibin.
They co-chair a Russian-Chinese nuclear energy commission which is part of the inter-governmental economic and technological cooperation commission.
The project of the space nuclear plant and MOX fuel will involve specialists from several research centres of Russia and China.
Apart from joint research, Russia's experts take part in construction of a Taiwanese nuclear power plant, a uranium enrichment factory and an experimental fast breeding reactor in China.
Rumyantsev and Jibin also discussed the progress with these projects.
The building of the Taiwanese plant is going to schedule, and Russia will send a jacket for the first energy unit at the end of this year. The plant will be launched in 2004-05. Construction work has been going for two and a half years. The plant's third phase has been finished and the fourth begun.
Rumyantsev and Jibin stressed that their meeting followed a visit to Russia by Chinese President Jiang Zemin. They said the joint nuclear projects were an indication of the two countries' developing strategic partnership and an example of fulfilment of the Russian-Chinese friendship treaty.
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