839 



Scheii 



REFLECTIONS ON PAST EXPERIENCE 



Community action, however, turned out to be 

 more difficult than anticipated. Individual countries 

 exhibited reluctance to share national control of 

 facilities or decisions related to programmatic devel- 

 opment, particularly with centralized institutional 

 decision-making bodies. Political and prestige con- 

 siderations intervened to foreclose the possibility of 

 establishing a single community association accord in 

 the breeder area. Instead, three association accords 

 were negotiated with France, the FRG, and Italy, 

 respectively. These agreements tended to be overlap- 

 ping and competitive rather than reflecting a tech- 

 nically based division of labor. Duplicative critical 

 assemblies were built in France and the FRG and 

 community resources were spread more thinly than 

 desirable over a large number of projects. Differences 

 in national programmatic objectives, pace, and invest- 

 ment led to strains among the participants and to 

 nonrenewal of the association when expiration came 

 in 1967 to 1968. 



In the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, non- 

 community-anchored bilateral and trilateral coopera- 

 tive agreements were negotiated among a number of 

 Euratom states. In 1967, Belgium and the Nether- 

 lands had established a breeder agreement involving 

 R&D with the FRG and in 1974 France and Italy 

 agreed to a full exchange arrangement for all R&D 

 information on the liquid-metal fast breeder reactor 

 approach. More importantly, in 1977 France and 

 the FRG consummated an agreement involving them- 

 selves and their partners that called for a full exchange 

 of R&D results and of commercial information, the 

 establishment of a joint company, Serena, for licens- 

 ing of know-how, and provided for equal funding of 

 their respective programs by France and the FRG. 

 This is the most advanced cooperative arrangement 

 on breeder reactors to date, placing the two major 

 European breeder programs in a partnership situation. 

 One of the salient characteristics is that each of the 

 major programs retains its separate national identity 

 and national commercial interests arc respected and 

 protected. On the other hand, the community's co- 

 ordinatmg role has declined to a very minimal level, 

 working through a fast reactor coordination commit- 

 tee with no regulatory or decision-making authority. 

 European cooperation on breeder reactors over the 

 past five years is generally regarded as a significant ex- 

 ample of international cooperation possibilities in the 

 development of advanced technology." 



III.C. NEA 



The NEA (earlier known as the ENEA) was cre- 

 ated as a semi-autonomous arm of the Organization 

 for European Economic Cooperation (later OECD).' 

 Like Euratom, it was in large measure an institu- 

 tionalized response to Europe's growing concern over 

 energy, and to the challenge of helping to establish a 



nuclear industrial structure in Europe, and to narrow- 

 ing the technological and economic gap between 

 Europe and the United States. Unlike Euratom, with 

 its strong supranational political overtones, its opera- 

 tional responsibilities, which made it sometimes 

 appear as a competitor with national industry rather 

 than a support to it, and its weighty administrative 

 apparatus, NEA was conceived essentially as a forum 

 to facilitate the creation of joint projects. It is for its 

 organizational innovativeness in fulfilling this man- 

 date that NEA is interesting. 



Two joint intergovernmental projects involving 

 applied R&D were established in Norway and the 

 United Kingdom, using an organizational concept of 

 lead country approach. In both instances, the host 

 country served as operating contractor to the NEA. 

 The Halden boiling heavy water reactor in Norway 

 became a joint multinational instrument for testing 

 prototype fuel elements and instrumentalities in 

 which a number of outside countries and entities 

 (such as Euratom) participated. The host country 

 owned, operated, and managed the project on behalf 

 of the participants, each of whom held a seat on a 

 governing board that made all R&D and budget deci- 

 sions. 



The Dragon project, which involved joint multi- 

 national development and use of a high temperature 

 reactor facility, involved an even larger number of 

 participating countries and entities. The United King- 

 dom and Euratom put up 85% of the financial sup- 

 port, the balance being funded by the remaining 

 participants. As in the case of Halden, operational 

 and managerial responsibility for the multinational 

 team and joint enterprise is in the hands of the host 

 country's institution acting under the authority of a 

 board of management on which representatives of the 

 participants sit. The project also proceeded in stages, 

 a new agreement being reached to cover each stage. 

 Among other things, this avoided the problem of run- 

 away budgets and the political tensions that accom- 

 pany budgetary politics. 



This approach of establishing an international 

 governing board of participants to provide policy 

 guidance to an international team functioning with 

 the legal, administrative, and technical support of a 

 host organization avoids the problem of having to 

 negotiate and establish a separate legal entity, and 

 allows fiexibility in terms of the nature of the par- 

 ticipants and the degree of their involvement and 

 commitment. Indeed, fiexibility is the hallmark of 

 the NE.A lead country approach, and it cannot be 

 said, when comparing NBA with Euratom, that the 

 price of fiexibility is triviality insofar as the rele- 

 vance and utility of the work is concerned. On the 

 other hand, as the pattern of lEA project develop- 

 ment seems to indicate, the a la carle approach to co- 

 operative R&D IS highly sensitive to the matter of 

 equivalence between costs and benefits, and countries 



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