U.S. JSCNEC Delegation Visited KAERI

A group of U.S. delegation headed by Mr Alex Burkart, the Deputy Director of the Office of Nuclear Energy, Safety and Security from Department of States (DOS), visited KAERI on October 13, 2016. The U.S. delegation visited Korea to participate in the 35th Meeting of ROK-U.S. Joint Standing Committee on Nuclear Energy Cooperation (JSCNEC) held in Seoul on October 11-13. 2016.

The technical visit to KAERI was arranged for the U.S. delegation on the sideline of the JSCNEC meeting to give briefings on current nuclear energy R&D activities conducted at KAERI and to promote their better understanding on Korea’s nuclear energy program.

The US delegation made a tour of PRIDE, STELLA and ATLAS facilities. The PRIDE is an ‘inactive’ facility utilizing mock-up spent fuel composed of depleted uranium that will in parallel use spent fuel for ‘active’ study as part of Korea-U.S. Joint Fuel Cycle Study which targets commercialization of pyroprocessing technology in the future. Through this visit, the U.S. delegation had a chance to see the new developments since their last visit in 2014 and this will help both countries to further strengthen their cooperation in this field.

As KAERI and Argonne National Lab of U.S. are actively involved in bilateral cooperation under the JSCNEC framework to develop SFR technology, the STELLA team made a presentation on KAERI’s SFR development status and its plan. The U.S. side was satisfied with the progress of this joint project and hoped to continuous close cooperation between two organizations.

Nuclear safety is one of the major R&D areas for both countries in which KAERI and U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are currently collaborating, including thermal hydraulic behavior study using ATLAS facility at KAERI under the international joint collaboration project called OECD/NEA-ATLAS which KAERI is a leading organization. ATLAS is a large-scale thermal-hydraulic integral effect test facility for evolutionary pressurized water reactors APR1400 and OPR1000