Ekonom: Czechs upgrading nuclear reactors for U.S. Navy

Prague, Feb 2 (CTK) - Czech scientists help upgrade nuclear reactors for the U.S Navy, weekly Ekonom writes yesterday and says experts concede that the cooperation offer is linked to the U.S. Westinghouse company being one of the bidders for the Czech Temelin nuclear power plant's extension.

Czech physicists work on methods to raise the U.S. Navy reactors' efficiency and reduce fuel consumption and the radiation level, Ekonom writes.

The research is based at the West Bohemian University (ZCU) in Plzen, and the Prague-seated Czech Technical University (CVUT) is to cooperate in it.

The USA has provided nine million crowns in grants to the Czech scientists.

"We're working out equations that will facilitate the calculation of neutrons' movement in a nuclear reactor. Our goal is to enable the calculations, that take weeks now, to be made in a few minutes," Radek Skoda, a physicist from CVUT, told the magazine.

This is the first contract of this type that the U.S. government has offered to Czech physicists. According to them, it is not sheer coincidence that the offer was made now that foreign companies, including Westinghouse, seek the huge Temelin extension procurement.

"It is logical that the Americans are striving to deepen cooperation [with Czechs] in nuclear physics, not in other areas such as plane engines research, now that the Temelin tender is underway," Skoda said.

Other experts admitted for Ekonom that the extension of scientific cooperation is a kind of lobbying.

They said the French, whose Areva company is a Temelin project bidder, have been lobbying in the same way.

"Both the French and the Americans have launched active negotiations with us. We've signed a scientific cooperation agreement directly with Areva. A similar partnership has been launched with the Americans now, though Westinghouse does not figure in it officially," CVUT expert Vaclav Dostal told Ekonom.

The U.S. has dismissed any links between the Temelin tender and the grant to Czech researchers.

The work of Czech scientists is the most important for the United States, Ekonom quotes Paul Losiewicz, from the Office of Naval Research, as saying.

($1=19.090 crowns)