Taiwan, the US, Japan, South Korea and China have reached a basic consensus on cooperation in radioactive waste treatment research, a Japanese newspaper reported yesterday.
The Asahi Shimbun said in a dispatch from Washington that the basic consensus was forged among representatives from major nuclear energy research institutes in the five countries at a recent meeting held in the US.
The report quoted a spokesman for the US Department of Energy as saying that the cooperation program will focus research on topics related to underground nuclear waste burial and that a joint research center will be opened in Las Vegas.
According to the spokesman, nuclear energy specialists, administrative staff and legal experts from the five countries will meet in South Korea in August to discuss concrete research items, cost-sharing, intellectual property rights and other relevant issues.
Noting that burying radioactive waste hundreds of meters beneath the earth is widely believed to be the most practical way to handle such hazardous waste, the spokesman said which kind of stratum of earth is most suitable for accommodating radioactive waste and how to prevent nuclear waste from contaminating underground water are key subjects for future technical study.
The spokesman further said if the new cooperative project proceeds smoothly, China would be likely to handle Taiwan's radioactive waste under its so-called "one China" policy.
Nevertheless, the spokesman said the just-concluded five-way meeting didn't touch on such issues as whether radioactive waste should be disposed of in each country's own territory or should be shipped abroad for permanent disposal.
Taiwan has had a hard time finding suitable sites to store radioactive waste from its three existing nuclear power plants as its current storage facility on Orchid Island will reach its capacity in the not-too-distant future.
Taiwan's state-owned Taipower company had at one time reached an agreement with North Korea on shipping its low-level radioactive waste to the reclusive communist country for permanent disposal, but the agreement has so far not been implemented due to complicated political issues.
Taiwan has also explored the possibility of cooperating with Russia or China in handling nuclear waste, but none of these efforts have borne fruit.
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