[Nuclear Symposium] The dilemma of Nuclear power

Nuclear power and its usage have been a never-ending dilemma since its beginnings. Nuclear power is the usage of nuclear fission to produce electricity, power, and mass-destruction weapons. As you can see it can be used in utmost good or complete evil, it’s as they say “a double-edged weapon”, something Albert Einstein would never have guessed.

Of course we’ve all heard about the Chernobyl disaster or most recently the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan, both being nuclear plants causing destruction –unintentionally-

It has many uses in several industries or in space, but the use that generated all of the attention, is the military one. There are about 439 nuclear plants around the world, though after what happened in Japan last year, many countries started to fear its usage. Germany decided to close theirs by 2022, and Italy banned nuclear power altogether, while China & the US are building more.

There’s no 100% safety degree when you’re dealing with nuclear power, many terrible accidents happened because of them, not to mention when it’s used in wars, what could happen, whether its lives lost or economic lost. No wonder many Anti-nuclear usage movements were made.

But IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) had a great rule in the field of nuclear security; they sent advisors, held workshops and seminars to improve the security level on nuclear plants in many countries.

Talking about the Middle East and how they perceive or deal with nuclear power shows that just recently the rest of the Middle East are trying to get into the nuclear power race, of course Iran here is way ahead of all of them.

The white house acclaimed that Syria was building nuclear reactors which was destroyed. On the other hand Egypt, Jordan, and many Gulf states declared their intentions to start their own nuclear programs. It appears that many Middle East countries started to acknowledge the importance of having nuclear power.

Of course, the most popular user of nuclear plants in the Middle East should be Iran, whose program was started in –approximately- 2006.

Nuclear power can be easily used in a peaceful way, for example, people can really make use of it to produce electricity and power. Also it shouldn’t be only developed countries that have the privilege of using nuclear energy for peaceful uses, developing countries as well.

This was what the “2012 Nuclear Security Summit” held in Seoul at March earlier this year, talked about. Fifty-eight world leaders from 53 states and four international organizations, including the United Nations, International Atomic Energy Agency, the European Union and INTERPOL, have participated in the Summit.

At the summit, the leaders discussed the nuclear terrorism threats and nuclear security preparations. They also reviewed the implementation of agreements and voluntary commitments. Then the leaders focused on major nuclear security issues. The 2012 Seoul summit discussed protection against dirty bombs or the sabotage of nuclear facilities. The Seoul summit also discussed the integration of nuclear security and safety.

*This material is part of those announced in the 2012 International AJA Forum held last October under the title of  the role of news media to sustain the effect of 2012 Seoul Nuclear Security Summit. The forum was supported by the Korea Press Foundation.