July
11-24, 1999
| The
Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP), in collaboration
with the Cooperative Monitoring Center (CMC), has convened a Nuclear Experts
Group to design technical measures that might increase nuclear transparency.
The result of these workshops is a Website in which data from cooperating
nuclear industries of the Asia Pacific can be displayed. Members of the
Nuclear Experts Group recently traveled to Japan and Taiwan to present
the transparency concept and the prototype Website to the nuclear industry
and appropriate government organizations in order to gain commitments to
participate. This trip followed a previous excursion for the same purpose
to South Korea in May 1999.
The team was lead by Ralph Cossa (Pacific Forum/CSIS), and included Kaoru Kikuyama (Japan Atomic Industrial Forum), John Olsen (CMC/SNL), and Larry Sanders of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). In Japan the host and arranger was Hiroyuki Kuroda of the Japan Institute for International Affairs (JIIA). Because Mr. Kuroda's assignment to JIIA from Tokyo Electric will end soon, his replacement, Keita Akakura, attended all sessions in Japan. Mr. Akakura is also from Tokyo Electric. In Japan three utilities agreed to participate. These are Tokyo Electric, Kansai Electric, and Japan Atomic Power. The Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (JNC) indicated interest and is considering an agreement currently. The JNC also gave the group a tour of the Tokai reprocessing and the bituminization plants. Hosts in Taiwan were Szu-yin Ho, Director of the Institute for International Relations (IIR) and Wen-Chen Chu of Tatung Institute of Technology. Additional support by Robert Kang and Fu-Kuo Liu of the IIR was very helpful. Commitments to participate were made by the Atomic Energy Council (AEC), the utility (Taipower), and the AEC's Radiation Monitoring Center (RMC). The CSCAP group toured Taiwan Power's Third Nuclear Power Station. In each presentation the most frequently asked question was concerning the role of this Website in relation to existing information release mechanisms. The answer is three-fold:
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