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Transparency is respectability
UAE goes for peaceful nuclear power which can be a potential model for other states to follow.
- By Francis Matthew, Editor at Large
- Published: 00:17 March 27, 2008
- Image Credit: Illustration: Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News
The UAE Cabinet decision to set up a government agency to develop nuclear power was not a surprise since the long-term plans for the country will include a much larger population and economy.
It has become increasingly obvious that this growth means a much larger demand for power and desalination, and there will not be enough gas to handle this, and also fulfil contracts to oil and gas buyers who will provide on-going revenues to the state over the next several decades.
Obviously, solar energy is an important alternative to nuclear power and gas, and it should be a much larger priority for the UAE than it is at present. There are several plans around the country to move to a more sustainable supply and use of power.
These include the green initiatives in Dubai, the new Masdar city in Abu Dhabi, and several others, but all these are a long way from rolling out widespread use of solar energy in commercial and residential situations.
The UAE's year-round sun provides a lot of free and renewable energy, and it offers a major resource for people and businesses to capture and use. At a local and residential level, home owners and small business should be encouraged to shift to solar power, even if there are more complicated pricing issues to sort out at a national level with private power being sold to the national grid.
But more fundamentally, solar technology is still not really developed enough to be used to supply a large and demanding national grid. There are several decades of expensive research and development before solar supply can be made large enough and also reliable enough to supply a grid as big as that of the UAE.
The UAE government should be involved in solar research, and it should commit to solar power in a big way for the very long term.
But in order to get through the next 10 to 30 years, the answer will still have to be nuclear power. And this applies right across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), not just to the UAE.
What is important is that such a nuclear commitment is made openly and transparently, and operated transparently to the outside world and UN's International Atomic Energy Authority. Everyone should expect the GCC states to live up to their insistence that they want nuclear power solely for peaceful purposes.
The UAE Cabinet's announcement this week made very clear that international transparency was at the heart of its planned nuclear programme. As Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Foreign Minister said, the plan will be published "in line with the UAE's keenness to deal with the international community transparently".
The Cabinet statement itself also emphasised transparency, but took it a stage further by offering the UAE's future system as a potential model for other non-nuclear states to follow if they wanted to develop nuclear power themselves.
"The UAE wants to set a new model to countries that do not poses nuclear programmes, so that they can utilise and benefit from nuclear energy with full support from the international community," it said.
The dangers are obvious. Nuclear technology is a very powerful, and like any tool, it can be used for good and for bad. The entire world is frightened of nuclear technology falling into terrorist hands and being perverted into some bomb for terrible purposes.
This fear is valid and has to be addressed head on by insisting on transparency.
What was interesting about the UAE's plan is that it suggests that once it has implemented its nuclear programme, and satisfied the international community that the plan is transparent and clearly not subject to abuse, then others might do the same.
This means that other countries with less resources, which may not be able to follow the UAE's initial route, can do the same. Or they might even join the UAE's system and have their nuclear fuel supplied and monitored by the same agency, so sharing in the same transparency and international approval.
Too dangerous
Nuclear power is going to come to the Gulf, and it is best that it does so in the best way possible. It is too dangerous to allow it to float around unmonitored, so total transparency is the only way that the Gulf states will be able to take their ambitions forward.
These domestic GCC plans are going ahead totally separately from other discussions in the region, such as the International Atomic and Energy Agency is having with the Iranians, who are having to prove to the international world that their peaceful nuclear programme is indeed peaceful and monitored.
If Iran had always been transparent about its programme there would be no need for the present crisis.
And of course, there is always the issue of the Israeli nuclear programme, which is not admitted, and not monitored, and is very probably not for peaceful purposes.
If the GCC is going to be open and peaceful in its programme, and Iran does the same, it will become all the more obvious that the international community should apply the same pressure on Israel to admit to its programme, and open up to inspection, and stop its military nuclear development.
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