Iaea Urged To Focus On Research Promotion

Opening an international symposium on harmonisation of health-related environmental measurements using nuclear and isotopic techniques, under the aegis of the IAEA here, Chidambaram said the Agency had been set up to safeguard and promote nuclear research. If the IAEA continued to lay too much emphasis on safeguards, ignoring the more important function of promoting research, scientists will start leaving it for greener pastures, reducing it to a second-rate organisation, he warned.

Stating that the nuclear scientist/technologist was environmentally one of the benign people in the world, Chidambaram said there was no alternative to nuclear power for a developing country like India, which had a rather low per capita energy consumption. He said nuclear power provided the answer to the shortage of fossil fuel, environmental problems confronting large hydro-electric projects.

 

and the limited scope of non-conventional energy like solar and wind power.

P R Denesi, the director of IAEAs laboratories at Seibersdorf, said at the symposium that the Agency was primarily involved in development of nuclear technology, but was extremely concerned about protection, improvement and conservation of environment.

Development of nuclear energy alone could ensure a better, cleaner, healthier and prosperous world, the scientist said.

Spelt out the damage caused by human development, Denesi said each second of development resulted, in:

* Depletion of 1,000 tonnes of top soil,

* Degradation of 3,000 square metres of forest area, and

* Destruction of 2,000 square metres of arable land.

Board of Radiation & Isotope Technology chief executive S Gangadharan, welcoming the delegates, said advances in analytical techniques had enabled the determination of small quantities of several elements and establish the chemical state of an element which is very essential for environmental measurements. But, he said, there had not been enough efforts to evaluate and harmonise these measurements. Hence the international symposia.

Over 100 delegates from 45 countries are participating in the four-day symposium.