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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Japan signals giving up nuclear reactor to France |
| 2005-06-22 |
| Japan signalled Wednesday it will give up on hosting a revolutionary nuclear energy reactor after reportedly securing a large share of the project in exchange for letting the main site be built in France. The Mainichi Shimbun said Japan has informed the European Union it will abandon its bid to build the multi-billion dollar International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in the village of Rokkasho-mura. The newspaper said a decision would be made official at a meeting Tuesday of the six partners in the project, which seeks to emulate the sun's fusion and create an inexhaustible future source of energy. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiken Sugiura, a spokesman for the government, acknowledged implicitly that Japan had agreed to the European Union offer to build the reactor in the French town of Cadarache. "It is not like 100 percent will go to the other party and our side will give up 100 percent," Sugiura told a news conference when asked about the Mainichi report. But he added: "We are negotiating how to share various things and on other details and not all has been decided yet." The European Commission also said it would await an announcement until the meeting in Moscow of the ITER partners -- China, the European Union, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. "For us, the decision will be taken during the ministerial meeting on June 28 in Moscow," said Antonia Mocan, a spokeswoman in Brussels for European Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik. The Mainichi said Japan made its decision after securing a deal to construct the project's main research facility in Japan and keep 20 percent of the jobs at the head office, including the top post of the ITER organization, for Japanese nationals. Japan is also set to get 20 percent of the work to build the reactor although Japan's share of the cost for ITER is 10 percent, the daily said without citing sources. The United States and South Korea have supported Japan's bid for ITER, while China and Russia back the European Union's efforts to bring it to France. Amid the deadlock, both the EU and Japan had signalled that they wanted to finalize a decision before the July 6-8 summit in Scotland of the Group of Eight industrialized nations which will include Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and French President Jacques Chirac. Media reports have indicated that despite the Japanese science ministry's enthusiasm for ITER, the finance ministry was been worried about burdening public finances. |
| Posted by:Spavirt Pheng6042 |
| #1 If your program's reactor costs billions of dollars and there are fights between different countries over which one gets _the_ reactor, there may be something wrong with the program. |
| Posted by: Phil Fraering 2005-06-22 22:29 |