The Forum to Stimulate
Knowledge Innovation for
Nuclear Energy
Shunsuke Kondo, Dr.
ChairmanJapan Atomic Energy Commission
INPRO Technical Briefing on the Occasion of INPRO’s 10th Anniversary,
September 22, 2010

Japan’s Nuclear Energy Policy Firmly commits to the promotion of safe,

secure, safeguarded and sustainable
nuclear energy use in every part of theworld
 Promotes a carefully decided set ofactions in three different time frames,
short-term, mid-term, and long-term.

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Actions in three time periods (1/2)
 Short-term actions
 Pursue excellence in the operation theexisting LWR fleet
 Pursue public confidence in the use ofnuclear energy
 Pursue closing of the back-end of fuelcycle technologically and institutionally2

Actions in three time periods (2/2)
 A Major Mid-term action
 Prepare to start the operation of the first
Generation III++ Advanced LWR before thestart of the retirement of existing fleet ofLWRs in around 2030
 Major Long-term actions
 Promote fast breeder reactor and its fuelcycle technology R&D
 Promote R&D of HTGR for hydrogenproduction, Separation and Transmutation,Fusion3

Nuclear Energy and the INPRO
 Witnessing rising expectation from every cornerof the world that nuclear power will play a keyrole in meeting increasing energy demand, while
assuring supply security and reducing carbon
dioxide emission.
 Nuclear energy is the result of human creativity,
ingenuity and innovation.
 Nuclear energy technology should be placed
under an appropriate framework with global
actions that incentivizes, encourages andpropels its proper use and its innovation forward.
 The IAEA and the INPRO should continue toplay such a role in future.
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The INPRO: A Knowledge Innovation
Infrastructure for GNEC*
 Its central construct should be to Bring together leading thinkers andpractitioners from different industrial sectors
and types of enterprise, from governments
and public policy agencies and fromprofessional organizations
for cross-fertilization of innovative solutions
for these topics critical to effective andefficient promotion of peaceful nuclear energy
use from which all participants can benefit.
*GNEC: Global Nuclear Energy Community
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Proposals of Discussions in the INPRO- Nuclear Safety  Accident anywhere in the world is accident

everywhere. After all, we have no reason toargue that different nuclear safety standard isapplied when you cross the national border.
 The INPRO should provide a forum for the
global community to exchange views on “Howsafe is safe enough?” among experts in diverse
countries and to pursue global consensus on theanswer to the question as an input to IAEA
safety standard.
 The experts will be able to extract the need forinnovation of knowledge and technology relatedwith nuclear safety through these discussion.
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Proposals of Discussions in the INPRO- Nuclear Safety  Specific example of topics for discussion: Any additional requirements on the safety
goals and objectives prepared for design andoperation of LWRs when we apply them tofast reactors that are different from LWRs in
terms of positive coolant void coefficient andpossibility of re-criticality in severe accident
conditions
 Effectiveness of additional innovative safety
features to be introduced to mitigate theimpact of these difference

7Proposals of Discussions in the INPRO- Nuclear Security  Facilitate exchange of knowledge andinnovation related with the application of theIAEA recommendation on the physicalprotection of nuclear material and nuclear
facilities and other relevant internationalinstruments.
 Recognizing the increasing pressure to improvesecurity, facilitate the development ofmethodology for quantitative security risk
analysis and quantitative security objectives sothat balanced view will prevail in the near future.

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Proposals of INPRO activities- Infrastructure Building and maintenance  The IAEA has published a series of technicalreports including milestone document thatguides a progressive development of national
nuclear infrastructure, by covering every aspectneeded for the country’s nuclear preparedness.
 The INPRO dialogue forum has been successful
in providing opportunities of discussion on key
relevant issues.
 This forum may evolve into a forum to sharenational status information of infrastructurebuilding for learning from each other and mutual
confidence building.
9Proposals of the INPRO Activity- Financing  It is irrational to exclude nuclear energy fromClean Development Mechanism (CDM). On theother hand, a report of Carbon Retirement has
informed us that the Mechanism is inefficient as
only $2.76 out of $10 buyer’s carbon offset goesto setting up and running the project.
 The forum should deliberate a more innovative
bilateral / multilateral carbon offset mechanism
involving the IAEA as validator and verifier.
 The IAEA standards and code of conduct,
various evaluation tools developed in the INPRO
and the review capability could be valuable
resources for validation and verification of offsets.
10Proposals to the INPRO Activity- Proliferation Resistance - (1/2)
 Global need for enrichment and reprocessing

services in 2050 (1500 Gwe) can be satisfied by
10 large scale enrichment service providers and10 large reprocessing service providers.
 A school of thought claims that these 10+10
providers should be multilateralized to realize a
global community with higher proliferation
resistance.
 Various fast reactor R&D groups are pursuing
the realization of a sodium cooled fast reactor
that loads fuel containing minor actinides (MA)so as to increase proliferation resistance of thesystem.
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Proposals to INPRO activities- Proliferation Resistance - (2/2)

 Existence of MA, due to considerable increasein gamma and neutron doses and decay-heat,requires specific protection and cooling means
for fabrication and transportation of the fuels.
 The INPRO forum should deliberate various
ways to combine fast reactors and multilateralfuel cycle centers and combine need forincreasing proliferation resistance of global
community and existence of various nuclear
energy systems, in general.

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Importance of Collaborative R&D
Effort of the INPRO To select R&D topics and concentrate theresources on few selected is a prevailing policy inmany national R&D programs.
 Accordingly innovative ideas and approaches
alternative to those selected are studied as minor
topics or topics in the generic/basic research
activity in such national R&D programs.
 Carefully selecting topics from them, the INPRO
may initiate various second track R&D programsfrom the point of view of such national programs
based on a small contribution from many
countries. Many a little makes a mickle!
13Conclusion
 Support the INPRO to continue to promotedialogue for innovative learning and knowledge
creation among various states and stakeholders,
as we believe that the energy technologies
supported by such dialogue will lead to harvest
from which the global community will benefit.

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Thank you very muchfor your kind attention.

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