I-NERI Bilateral Collaborations
United States and Brazil Agree on Joint Nuclear Energy Research Project
The United States Department of Energy (DOE) and the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) signed a bilateral agreement on June 20, 2003. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, signed the agreement for DOE and Brazilian Minister of Science and Technology Roberto Amaral signed for MST.
This agreement provides for DOE and MST to jointly conduct research and development (R&D) collaboration in the field of nuclear technology. The areas of collaboration under this Agreement include advanced reactor developments for future-generation nuclear energy systems; advanced reactor fuel and reactor fuel cycle-integration; life management and upgrading of current operating reactors; advanced fuel and material irradiation and use of experimental facilities; environmental and safety issues related to new reactor and fuel cycle technologies; and fundamental areas of nuclear engineering and science.
The Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology's (NE) and the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN) agreed to initiate the first project under this Agreement on December 20, 2004. The project is titled Development of Advanced Instrumentation and Control for an Integrated Primary System Reactor.
The objective of this project is to perform R&D that supports instrumentation and control needs for Integral Primary System Reactors (IPSR). Specifically, the project will undertake five major tasks: identification of the instrumentation needs for IPSRs, and specifically where additional development is required; development and demonstration of high reliability, high accuracy water level measurement technologies directly applicable to in-vessel nuclear power plant applications; development of a reactor transient identification and classification system supporting safe and reliable reactor operation; creation of a hierarchical, supervisory control scheme for the IRIS reactor supporting both multimodular deployment and balance-of-plant reconfiguration; and characterization of the operator interaction with the control and protection systems with emphasis on the design considerations of common control rooms for multireactor plants built using sequential construction.
Brazil is a Charter Member of the Generation IV International Forum (GIF), a group of eleven members (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, France, Japan, Republic of Korea, Republic of South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States) organized to conduct collaborative nuclear technology R&D. GIF activities support the recommendations in the National Energy Policy to pursue research that will develop next-generation nuclear energy technologies and to collaborate with international partners with highly developed fuel cycles and a record of close cooperation.
