The International Atomic Energy Agency will encourage countries interested in setting up nuclear power plants and give them an 'assurance of fuel supply', an official said on Tuesday.
The IAEA has initiated a programme on 'multilateral approaches to the nuclear fuel cycle' with the twin objectives of assurance of fuel supply and proliferation-resistance and Indonesia, Vietnam, Turkey and Moracco have agreed to set up nuclear power plants under this, said Chaitanyamoy Ganguly.
Ganguly heads the division for nuclear fuel cycle and waste technology in the IAEA's department of nuclear energy. He was inaugurating a five-day international conference on 'Advances in Nuclear Materials'.
The IAEA is developing a concept whereby countries that establish nuclear power plants with an assurance that they will not proliferate will get an 'assurance of fuel supply' for their reactors from the agency.
The International Project on Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycles focuses on fast reactor fuels and closed fuel cycle (like India), high temperature gas-cooled reactor fuels and fuel cycle, and fuels with very long core for small and medium size reactors.
Ganguly also told the international scientific community present at the conference that IAEA is closely following developments in Generation-IV international forum, Global Nuclear Infrastructure and International Fuel Cycle Centre of Russia, and the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership of the US.
Speaking at the conference, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre director S Banerjee elaborated the microstrucural evolution in zirconium-based alloys.
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