S. Korea, Romania agree to launch new dialogue platform on civil nuclear energy

SEOUL, South Korea and Romania agreed Tuesday to launch a new dialogue platform involving their private entities to discuss ways of stronger cooperation on civil nuclear energy, Seoul's industry ministry said. Industry Minister Ahn Duk-geun and his Romanian counterpart, Sebastian-Ioan Burduja, signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) in Seoul, which calls for creating the platform by involving their governments and private entities for longer-term consultations on nuclear energy cooperation, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. Under the MOU, the two nations also agreed to work more closely on nuclear power generation, nuclear fuel, advanced small modular reactors and various other issues regarding the industry, the ministry added. The signing ceremony was attended by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis. Romania aims to increase its use of nuclear and other renewable energy resources to better achieve net-zero goals. In December 2023, South Korea and Romania, along with the United States and 22 other nations, launched the Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy during the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference and agreed to work together to advance a goal of tripling nuclear energy capacity globally by 2050. On Tuesday, Ahn and Burduja held separate talks and agreed to strive together for the successful implementation of a project to build a tritium removal facility at Romania's Cernavoda Nuclear Power Plant, according to the ministry. Last year, South Korea's Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. won a deal to build the facility at the plant, some 170 kilometers east of Bucharest, meant to extract tritium from heavy water and store it in a safe form. Source: Yonhap News Agency