South Africa and Russia are in talks to create a new bilateral agreement on cooperation in science and technology because the current science and technology cooperation accord between the two countries does not cover issues such as intellectual property, which has proved an obstacle in the development of deeper collaboration. As there is an existing agreement in place, there is no haste in developing the new one, which will hopefully be concluded within the next 12 to 18 months.
Both countries support the drawing up of a new accord regarding a more comprehensive agreement as a necessary prerequisite to the more rapid development of scientific and technological cooperation in many areas. The two countries are also negotiating the mutual recognition of the degrees and diplomas awarded by their respective universities and other tertiary educational institutions. Such an agreement would greatly facili- tate intra-Brics science and technology cooperation.

Separately, South Africa will be hosting the fifth Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (better known as Brics) summit in Durban on March 26 and 27. A number of multilateral agreements between the five Brics countries are under negotiation and may be ready to be signed at the summit. For example, a team of Russian experts visited South Africa at the end of January as part of the negotiation process. Among those under active negotiation are agreements on cooperation in science, education and transport.

Meanwhile, the director-general of Russia’s State-owned nuclear energy group Rosatom, Sergey Kirienko, who visited this country early last month, invited South African Energy Minister Dipuo Peters to visit Russia for the international Nuclear Power in the 21st Century conference, to be held in Saint Petersburg in late June. Rosatom is one of the overseas groups seek- ing to participate in South Africa’s proposed new nuclear power plant (NPP) build pro-gramme. The Integrated Resource Plan 2010 fore-sees South Africa building NPPs with a total capacity of 9.6 GW by 2030. To this end, Rosatom’s international arm, Rusatom Over-seas, has set up an office in South Africa.

Rosatom will be offering South Africa its latest- (third- or third-plus-) generation reactor designs. The Russian third-generation reactor design is the VVER-1200, while the VVER-1200A is a third-generation-plus design. VVER is a Russian abbreviation equivalent to PWR (pressurised water reactor).
However, Rosatom is also interested in multipurpose reactors (MPRs) which the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) is considering. This would be a replacement for the corpor-ation’s current Safari-1 research reactor, which can be used both to manufacture radioisotopes and for scientific and technological research.
Should Necsa decide to acquire an MPR, it would be built on Necsa’s Pelindaba West site, close by Safari-1. The project would take some eight to ten years from start to the commissioning of the new reactor. Such an MPR would be similar in size and power (about 20 MW to 25 MW) to Safari-1.