Pascal Daures: nonproliferation is first line of defense against proliferation

Pascal DAURES, engineer in nuclear science and technology. He worked 10 years in the French CEA at the Cadarache Research Center. He joined the European Commission Joint Research Center in 1994. Now Mr. Daures is a coordinator of the JRC TACIS project.

I am a coordinator of TACIS project in Joint Research Center (JRC) dealing with the nuclear safety issues - safeguards, nonproliferation and nuclear security issues, fighting illicit trafficking activities.

So, we have seven projects going with the Russian Federation starting by 2005 and be completing before 2012.

Please what is your opinion about the Tripartite Seminar "Control and accountability measures applied to nuclear material", which is held in Obninsk?

We are supporting this conference together with our American colleagues. This is very important conference. We are interesting to participate in this conference to listen the people and exchange a lot of best practices in the field of nuclear safeguards.

We realize the quality of the works done in the Russian Federation and the quality of the network of the people. We can see very interesting presentations and meet very interesting people here.

How important is the nonproliferation problem in the modern world?

We all know that the proliferation is still important challenge for the world. The cases of the international attention are very well known - Iran, North Korea, some other countries.

So, the nonproliferation is and will remain anyway the first line of defense against the proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction. This is why this kind of meetings as we have now in Russia is very important as well as all other international initiatives just to guarantee that the first step of nonproliferation which is the safeguards and physical protection of nuclear materials is not failing somewhere, because if such failure will happen the consequences for the nonproliferation will be very serious.

Thank you for the interview for AtomInfo.Ru web-edition, which was given during the Tripartite Seminar in Obninsk, Russia.

SOURCE: AtomInfo.Ru

DATE: October 31, 2008

Topics: France