UAE and South Korea unite on nuclear plan

The UAE's independent nuclear regulator has signed an agreement to cooperate with a South Korean counterpart to track nuclear material and secure facilities.

The UAE's nuclear regulator has signed an agreement to co-operate with its South Korean counterpart.

Creating safeguards will be critical as the UAE forges ahead with an ambitious plan to produce nuclear energy by 2017, using reactors and fuel supplies from South Korean companies.

"Since the technology that's been selected by the operating company is Korean, we have a vested interest in co-operating with the governmental agencies in Korea," said William Travers, the director general of the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation (FANR). He said the agreement would allow FANR and the Korea Institute of Nuclear Non-proliferation and Control (Kinac) to "establish a common language", giving the UAE the option of adopting the same software or tracking systems to monitor the location of nuclear material and protect nuclear facilities.

Such nuclear safeguards will be critical as the UAE enters a global nuclear energy scene shaken by ongoing events in Japan, which is struggling to tackle radiation leaks at its stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant in the wake of a disastrous tsunami and earthquake.

Yesterday's agreement came a day after Lee Myung-bak, the Korean president, visited the proposed site of the UAE's nuclear plant for a ground-breaking ceremony.

The UAE has signed deals with other countries' governments over nuclear co-operation. Those agreements pave the way for those countries' nuclear regulators to establish relationships, including arrangements signed last year with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Korea's other nuclear regulatory body, the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety.

The UAE's programme, the first in the Arab world, has been heralded by international observers as a model in transparency and non-proliferation issues.

In 2009 Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, the Government's nuclear energy company, signed a US$20 billion (Dh73.46bn) contract with a Korean consortium led by Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco) to build four reactors for Braka, a town in Abu Dhabi's Western Region. Earlier generations of the reactor, Kepco's APR1400, are used in South Korea.

"This is important in terms of the experience of the Korean regulator in regulating the Korean reactors and plants in Korea," said Hamad al Kaabi, the UAE representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a global nuclear watchdog based in Vienna. "The goal is to develop capabilities."

The UAE, like other nations in the region including Saudi Arabia, is counting on nuclear power to help meet growing electricity demand as well as free up oil and gas currently used for power generation to more lucrative uses, such as exports of petrochemicals. Abu Dhabi hopes nuclear power will provide a quarter of its electricity within the next decade.