With UN help, young scientists from developing world attend nuclear seminar

The United Nations atomic watchdog agency is helping top young nuclear professionals from less developed countries to attend a high-powered six-week seminar on issues ranging from stemming the spread of nuclear weapons and terrorism to solving environmental crises like climate change and clean water shortages.

About half the 76 young scientists at the World Nuclear University´s (WNU) first ever Summer Institute at the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, United States, come from less developed countries, and are attending with financial backing from the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Averaging 30 years of age, the WNU Summer Fellows represent some 33 countries and during the programme, which ends on Saturday, attended lectures by internationally-renowned figures, known for their contributions to the development, politics and peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology.

These included Hans Blix, former Head of the IAEA, and Richard Hooper and Dimitri Perricos, veteran Safeguards Inspectors who were members of the Agency´s Iraq Action team, monitoring the dismantlement of Baghdad’s weapons of mass destruction under the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein.

In sessions this week, the WNU Summer Fellows presented group projects, the culmination of a month´s work, fresh ideas and innovative, if at times controversial, thinking.

One team proposed the need for a World Nuclear Bank to tax countries with nuclear weapons for not disarming. “The more nuclear weapons they have, the more they pay,” United States Fellow David Barber said. The Bank would in turn channel these funds towards assisting developing countries to gain peaceful nuclear applications, or encouraging States to disarm.

Other presentations focused on ways to rollout cancer therapy treatment to the developing world. Among others, action plans to provide cancer patients in Mongolia and Ghana with treatment were presented. Other teams presented energy policy plans they have developed for countries including China, Indonesia, Slovakia, Germany and the United States.

The WNU was inaugurated in September 2003. The IAEA helped to shape the Summer Institute´s six-week educational programme, and participated in the selection of Fellows. The course had the support of the United States Department of Energy.