The Peaceful and Safe Uses of Nuclear Energy

The International Atomic Energy Agency become created in the UN family in 1957 with a dual mandate: to promote the peaceful uses of nuclear electricity and to verify States' undertakings no longer to divert nuclear substances for army functions. These stay the dual pillars of the Agency's sports these days, despite the fact that they have got widened to embody nearly the whole spectrum of nuclear problems, together with nuclear safety. The Agency - a Secretariat in Vienna interacting with the 123 Member States - is at pains to make certain however that the vital and suitable stability is maintained.

For our developing Member States the ability to get entry to nuclear understanding, training and device is an crucial purpose for their involvement with and aid for the Agency. At the same time, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons has been and stays a very prominent object on the worldwide political schedule and has faced the IAEA with giant challenges, some of which I will touch on later.

Our position in non-proliferation is highly excessive profile, and will be the dominant subject of this Seminar. There has been much less interest paid inside the media or the sector at massive to our technical help programmes.

ARCAL


Let me awareness on sports within the Latin American/Caribbean vicinity. Many of the IAEA sports on this place are organized inside the framework of the Regional Co-operative Arrangements for the Promotion of Nuclear Science and Technology in Latin America (ARCAL). This programme seeks to promote regional co-operation and integration within the nuclear discipline and to clear up common technological troubles throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Many countries represented on this Seminar participate actively within the implementation of the ARCAL Programme, which is now entering segment III. IAEA, in an advisory role, has worked with a number of your international locations in such regions as radiation protection and application of nuclear techniques in remedy, agriculture, inventory breeding, meals, hydrology and the look at of renewable energy assets.

Nuclear Reactor - Jamaica


Back in 1981, thru an IAEA extrabudgetary contribution from the united states, the Centre for Nuclear Sciences here in Jamaica obtained investment to establish facilities for a 20 KW Slowpoke reactor which become commissioned and examined at the University of the West Indies. The Centre has been gambling a primary role within the development of peaceful uses of nuclear electricity ever on the grounds that. I want to extend my congratulations to the Centre for its choice as a Centre of Excellence in 1995. This Centre has initiated a employees radiation tracking programme which is working efficaciously, and is providing a dosimetry carrier to each public and personal sectors.

Health and Industry

In the fitness place let me mention a local programme for the prognosis of Hepatitis B infection via simple, cheaper however dependable nuclear detection strategies.

The significance of this effort is contemplated within the reality that 5% of the world s population is affected by this contamination and it is the leader reason of cirrhosis and liver most cancers. In developing international locations the prevalence of the infection is as excessive as 30% with literally tens of millions of affected humans. Finding and using an less expensive manner of prognosis is required to save you the unfold of the disorder.

In industry there is an interesting venture for the utility of nuclear technology to make pleasant measurements and ensure method control, so as to increase excellent and decrease expenses.

Fruit Fly Eradication in Latin America


Use of the so-called Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is an environmentally pleasant technique of pest manage which could dramatically increase earnings from agriculture merchandise for export. It has demonstrated effective in opposition to fundamental insect pests, inclusive of several varieties of fruit flies, tsetse fly, and the New World Screwworm. It is predicated on releasing considerable numbers of male bugs sterilized by way of low doses of radiation that mate without producing offspring.

Screwworm eradication


There is some other very successful eradication programme targeting the screwworm inside the Latin American vicinity, again primarily based on the Sterile Insect Technique. This parasite causes losses of millions in dollars each yr to livestock manufacturers in regions which have not undergone eradication.

Mexico changed into declared freed from screwworm in 1991 and due to the fact that then, the a hit eradication marketing campaign has continued. Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua have been beneficiaries. Eradication activities are currently in progress in Costa Rica. The purpose of this attempt is to unfastened the area of the screwworm down to the Isthmus of Panama by means of 1997. A manufacturing plant, which can mass rear 500 million sterile flies in line with week, started running in 1976 inside the Chiapas Province of Mexico. It has been instrumental in eradication programmes at some stage in the entire vicinity and even in North Africa.