Seoul, Dec 07, 2005 -- BBC Monitoring

 

A South Korea-US joint research centre opened Wednesday [7 December] to study ways of using atomic power to produce hydrogen gas, officials said Wednesday.

The centre, tentatively dubbed the South Korea-US Nuclear Hydrogen Joint Development Centre, is located in Taejon, South Korea's science mecca, about 164 km south of Seoul. The research centre will be jointly run by the state-run Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, US nuclear technology company General Atomics and Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction Co., a South Korean manufacturer of power-generation equipment, according to the officials at the Ministry of Science and Technology. The joint project is expected to help South Korea to prepare for a time when hydrogen will become a significant energy source, they said. The opening of the centre follows a memorandum of understanding signed between the two sides in August to set up research centres in General Atomics' main office in San Diego, California and in South Korea. The US facility opened in September. General Atomics is the only company in the US that has been working on the new reactor system since the 1970s and is an integral member of the US Department of Energy's nuclear hydrogen initiative and the next-generation nuclear plant.

Source: Yonhap news agency, Seoul, in English 0507 gmt 7 Dec 05

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