Letter from the French Foreign Ministry to the UK Embassy in Paris on the Franco-Indian Reactor Agreement

MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

FRENCH REPUBLIC.

Paris, 24th August, 1951.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has the honour to inform the Embassy of the United Kingdom that the Atomic Energy Commissariat and the Indian Atomic Energy Commission have, since the publication of scientific information concerning the construction of nuclear reactors, examined and appreciated the advantages which would accrue from a common study of the problems presented by the use of beryllium as moderator in such a reactor.

The two organisations have reached an agreement to undertake jointly a programme which will cover the following points:-

Necessary experimental and technical nuclear studies and research into the possible types of reactor of moderate power using beryllium or its components as a delaying agent.

Research into the preparation of metallic beryllium and its components as a delaying agent.

Without excluding the possibility of a second programme, in the course of which the joint construction of a reactor will be undertaken, the contracting parties have recognised that such an undertaking constituted a problem, study of which could only be initiated at the end of the work envisaged in the agreement.

Embassy of the United Kingdom,

Paris.