THE BUSH Administration should be relieved to hear that the nuclear research being conducted on the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies has nothing to do with military objectives.
That much was conveyed for local and foreign consumption as a small group of international scientists convened their planned workshop on small research nuclear reactors at Mona.
The specific assurances came from Vice Chancellor, Professor Rex Nettleford and Professor Gerald Lalor, director of the International Centre for Environmental and Nuclear Sciences (ICENS). They stressed that the focus was not on warfare but on areas related to socio-economic development.
As we reported in yesterday's issue, the ICENS' Slowpoke nuclear reactor has focused on environmental geochemistry and its application to agriculture and health. Much work has been done in mapping the country's geochemical profile involving heavy metals such as lead and cadmium.
It was in connection with this work that scientist and senior research fellow Dr. Mitko Vutchkov of ICENS has been honoured by The Gleaner for his work in dealing with lead contamination in the rural St. Andrew village of Kintyre.
Professor Lalor's expertise has been reflected in contributions published in this newspaper about the potential of nuclear power in replacing traditional sources of energy. While he argued early last year that nuclear power will be of increasing importance in the world energy picture he did not see that happening here in the forseeable future.
Nonetheless, the reactor at Mona has already demonstrated its potential. With the help of the international linkages the university has established, we feel sure that further research will help development both here and throughout the region.
The work deserves the strongest support for it is part of the technological advances which must keep pace with the economic, social, and political changes affecting the whole world.
Nuclear proliferation is just one of these developments which spark the current crises confronting the United States - the possibility of a war with Iraq on the question of weapons of mass destruction and North Korea presuming to develop its own nuclear capability.
Washington, however, will be more preoccupied with those matters than with the research at Mona.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
