2023-11-21 18:01:27
SCK CEN did not consult its supervisory authority on the agreement signed at the beginning of the month on small modular reactors. The Minister of Energy, Tinne Van der Straeten, does not hide her annoyance.
It was Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (Open Vld) who announced, on November 8, the signing of a collaboration agreement between the Mol nuclear research center (SCK CEN) and Romanian, Italian and American partners, including the giant Westinghouse, on SMRs, small modular reactors. A agreement which was signed without consulting the responsible ministers Tinne Van der Straeten, Pierre-Yves Dermagne and Thomas Dermine, we learned on Tuesday in the House, during the presentation of the general policy note from Energy Minister Tinne Van der Straeten (Groen). “SCK CEN signed without having consulted the supervisory authority. And it included confidential provisions in this agreement which prevent it from being shared with Parliament, while we are doing everything to avoid this in the agreement with Engie,” declared the minister.
Risk of proliferation
“The intellectual property for anything related to Myrrha is given away for free. I have a huge problem with that.”
She adds that several points of this agreement pose a problem to her. “Intellectual property for everything related to Myrrha is given away for free. So if there are exploitable results, they are not protected.” Another difficulty: the agreement would concern SMRs which would run on MOX, a fuel resulting from the reprocessing of plutonium. “This is impossible within the framework of the treaty non-proliferation”, says Tinne Van der Straeten. And non-proliferation is one of the criteria set by the government to allocate 100 million euros to SCK CEN for research on these SMRs.
Tinne Van der Straeten also reaffirmed that it is not no need to change the nuclear phase-out law to develop these SMRs, a change demanded by three majority parties. The explosive subject should be debated in committee on December 14.
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