India Safeguards Agreement Signed at Vienna (2 February, 2009)

An Agreement between the Government of India and the IAEA for the Application of Safeguards to Civilian Nuclear Facilities was signed today in Vienna by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei and Ambassador Saurabh Kumar of India.

The safeguards agreement, which is the result of several rounds of consultations conducted between India and the IAEA since November 2007, was approved by the IAEA Board of Governors in August 2008. The agreement will enter into force on the date the IAEA receives from India written notification that its statutory and/or constitutional requirements for entry into force have been met.

The IAEA currently applies safeguards to six nuclear reactors in India under safeguards agreements concluded between 1971 and 1994. In the future, additional reactors are expected to be under IAEA safeguards under the newly-signed agreement (Source: IAEA News).

Pakistan’s nukes are threat to the world

One of the biggest challenges to the Barack Obama’s Administration is to ensure safety of the Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in case of a possible collapse of Pakistan. Pakistan is the hub for the fundamentalist violence and camps for training in terrorist activities. The nuclear weapons or “dirty bombs” (basically a radioactivity dispersal device) may even land in the hands of fundamentalists or Jihadis. Under the present scenario of uncertain political leadership in Pakistan, world community should be concerned about possible misadventure from Pakistan’ army chief. The control of nuclear weapons with the army is not strategically desirable for India.

Tough-line diplomacy by India and other world leaders can only make Pakistan leaders to see reason and ensure that the nuclear weapons and radioactive materials are in safe custody of the civilian government and would not fall into the wrong hands.

Indian nuclear deals for whose gain?

The Bush administration helped the American companies to sell their nuclear reactors and other nuclear-related components to India. Similar story goes with France, Russia and a few more countries. Others thus get the business at whose cost? Of course, at the cost of India. India may get a few more nuclear power reactors, which may not increase its percentage nuclear contribution after 8 to 10 years, when the demand also would have increased to a great extent. But, India will be giving over US$100 billion business to these countries! These countries were without much nuclear business for a long time.

This may result ultimately in stagnation of India’s own R & D activities in nuclear fuel cycle operations. NEED is the mother of invention. When there is no need, why spend time & money on developmental activities. That means commercialization of India’s “hard-earned” thorium fuel cycle operations will be a few decades away from now.

India should also work seriously to commercialize other non-conventional energy sources, like wind, solar, and geo-thermal, so that additional future requirements will be met by the mix of energy sources other than fast-depleting fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.

Nuclear Fuel Bank Initiative by IAEA Receives Crucial EU Support

The European Union (EU) recently pledged Euro 25 million ($32 million) towards a nuclear fuel bank proposal to be placed under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s control. The EU pledge, along with those by Norway, the United Arab Emirates and the USA shows growing momentum for a new more equitable framework for nuclear energy, says IAEA Director General. The pledge is a boost for the initiative originally launched by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) in 2006.

Enriched uranium provides the fuel for many of the world´s nuclear power reactors, and the enrichment process is a vital process in a multi-step nuclear fuel cycle. The enrichment of uranium, while a necessary step in the creation of the fuel that power many of the world´s civilian nuclear reactors, can also be employed for use in nuclear weapons.

An IAEA fuel bank would guarantee supply of nuclear fuel and reactor services to bona fide States and protect them from politically motivated disruption of supply while at the same time minimizing the risk of nuclear proliferation through dissemination of the enrichment technologies. This initiative will provide necessary support for countries like India in case of withdrawal of nuclear cooperation by the partners in the recently signed nuclear deals, for some reason or the other.

Decommissioning Nuclear Facilities

The IAEA 51st General Conference was the setting for the launch of a new international initiative aimed at bolstering cooperation between organizations involved in the decommissioning of nuclear installations. Called the International Decommissioning Network (IDN), the initiative will act as a conduit for the flow of skills and information from those Member States with proven decommissioning expertise to those facing the challenge for the first time or whose programs are constrained by lack of resources.

Around the world more than 350 nuclear installations - including research and medical as well as power reactors - are ageing and approaching the end of their operational life-span. Decommissioning a nuclear facility is a complicated and costly process. Some have already been shut down and await the complicated and the costly task of decommissioning. The decommissioning is a process by which the facilities are cleared of industrial and radioactive contamination so that they may safely be used for other purposes. Many of these facilities are small and widely distributed geographically and the decommissioning strategies need to be tailored to cope with limited experience, infrastructure and funding.

Formed just a year ago, the International Decommissioning Network (IDN) is changing the way knowledge, expertise and information are shared between Member States. It was noted that many developing member states have become sources of very specific technical expertise in decommissioning of nuclear fuel cycle facilities (Source: IAEA News). The IAEA should serve as a nodal agency to collate and disseminate the decommissioning knowledge to Member States without much red tapism.

Nuclear Science for Food Security: Plant Breeding Technique Can Help Beat World Hunger (IAEA News)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called for increased investment in a plant breeding technique that could bolster efforts aimed at pulling millions of people out of the hunger trap. IAEA scientists use radiation to produce improved high-yielding plants that adapt to harsh climate conditions such as drought or flood, or that are resistant to certain diseases and insect pests. Called mutation induction, the technique is safe, proven and cost-effective. It has been in use since the 1920s.

This year, shortages combined with increasing demand have created a new global food crisis. At its root: adverse weather conditions linked to climate change, the diversion of land for the cultivation of bio-fuels, and a tendency to live on food credit. As usual, the poor are hardest hit by rising prices. In addition to the more than 850 million people worldwide who were already going hungry, millions more now are being pushed below the one-dollar-a-day poverty level.

For decades the IAEA, in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), has assisted its Member States to produce more, better and safer food. In plant breeding and genetics, its expertise is helping countries around the world to achieve enhanced agricultural output using nuclear technology.

Already more than 3000 crop varieties of some 170 different plant species have been released through the direct intervention of the IAEA: they include barley that grows at 5000 meters (16,400 ft) and rice that thrives in saline soil. These varieties provide much needed food as well as millions of dollars in economic benefits for farmers and consumers, especially in developing countries.

Plants produced using induced mutation are cultivated throughout the world. Others are being developed, seeking to enhance agriculture and resolve problems caused by climate change or disease/insect pests. In India, Mutant groundnut series "TAG" has early maturity, high pod growth and greatly improved harvest rates. Total domestic seed sales amount to 132,000 tons and cover 6.5 million hectares (16.06 million acres). Good going.

Nuclear decay data – New by ICRP

Committee 2 of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) has the responsibility for providing dose coefficients for intakes of radionuclides by workers who are occupationally exposed and by members of the public exposed to radionuclides in the environment. During the past thirty years, these coefficients have been based on the energies and intensities of emitted radiations tabulated in Publication 38 issued in 1983. That publication, developed during the preparation of Publication 30, addressed 820 radionuclides – 764 with half-lives greater than 10 min and 56 with half-lives less than 10 min as either decay products of a longer lived isotope or a radioisotope of potential interest in nuclear medicine.

The new publication announced by the ICRP supersedes Publication 38 and provides data on the energies and intensities of the emissions of 1251 radionuclides. Unlike in the publication 38, the data are provided in electronic form on a CD rather than printed tables. The data will serve as the basis for calculation of absorbed doses in organs and tissues of the body and the evaluation of localized depth dose distributions. All radioisotopes of elements of atomic number through 100 (hydrogen to fermium) with half-lives greater than 1 min for which the nuclear structure information were sufficient for a meaningful assessment of the nuclear and atomic emissions are included in the publication. This includes 922 isotopes of half-life greater than 10 min and 329 isotopes of half-life less than 10 min. This departure enables presenting the data in a form need by the dosimetrist and the inclusion of the continuous energy distributions of beta particles and that of neutrons which accompany spontaneous fission.
(Source: ICRP Website)