Nuclear Safety Co-operation
Friday, 07 September 2007 12:24 | 
Background
A Council Regulation establishing an “Instrument for Nuclear Safety Cooperation” (INSC) came into force in January 2007 replacing the existing TACIS nuclear safety programme. The main changes to the existing programme aimed at extending the scope of action to cover all third countries and not just countries from the former Soviet Union. Likewise, the European Commission considered that the approach to nuclear safety around the world should be done mainly by the transfer of know-how, through “soft assistance” and the creation of a nuclear safety culture.
The INSC will run from 2007 to 2013, and around 70 million € will be devoted per year to nuclear safety projects up to 2013. Different selection criteria will be taken into consideration in order for the potential beneficiary countries to qualify for the program: strategic and geographic criteria as well as technical criteria (urgency of problems and imminence of serious nuclear program to be established) will be taken into account for choosing the beneficiary countries. It is also considered compulsory that an official expression of interest from the third country is put forward in order to become an official candidate to benefit from the INSC. Another requirement is that such country should be a member, or should show a strong willingness to become a signatory, of the IAEA conventions.
For the time being and after the organisation of nuclear safety seminars and exploratory missions in different potential beneficiary countries, projects devoted to the establishment of a regulatory framework have been launched in Jordan and Egypt.
EC/FORATOM Contact Group
A TACIS Contact Group was set up in 2003 to discuss the main issues of the Tacis programme (nuclear liability, intellectual property, commercial conditions, procurement procedures, contractual ambiguities ...) and discuss implementation of projects. Since the establishment of the new instrument, the FORATOM-EC Contact Group’s name has been changed to become INSC Task Force.
FORATOM has a long standing relationship with DG AIDCO responsible for the INSC within the European Commission. The Commission will continue to work through the EC/FORATOM Contact Group to exchange relevant information on issues concerning the INSC.
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