Let's not chase the atom

The Indo- us nuclear deal raises two critical questions. Do we need a large-scale expansion of nuclear power? Do we need to expand our arsenal of weapons of mass destruction? The answer to both is no.

Arms and the man

Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream Edited by M V Ramana, C Rammanohar Reddy Orient Longman 516 pages Rs 575

The other side of matter

star trek's antimatter-driven warp drive may still be a fantasy but the idea of antimatter itself got a fillip. The ever-controversial Geneva-based European Organisation for Nuclear Research (cern) has recently produced antihydrogen -- the antimatter equivalent of hydrogen atoms.

Dumping nuclear burden

the Australian government is being bombarded with criticism for deciding to hand back a 3.2 lakh hectare (ha) site to its traditional aboriginal owners despite fresh evidence surfacing that the land is still toxic from nuclear tests conducted 40 years ago.

Backroom deals

harlan Watson, the high-profile us senior climate change negotiator and special representative, arrived in Delhi on April 29, 2002. On the same day, the Confederation of Indian Industry (cii) began closed-door parleys with the Washington-based think-tank, Atlantic Council.

Green laws resented

in a recent report, the parliamentary standing committee on energy has observed that stringent environmental regulations hinder the progress of projects conducted by the Union government's Department of Atomic Energy (dae). The report has also emphasised the need to promote nuclear energy.

Threats from the past

at least 11,000 us citizens died from cancer after being exposed to radioactive fallout from nuclear testing done during the Cold War. This was revealed in the report of a recent study conducted by the us Department of Health and Human Services (dhhs). The report further mentions that virtually every person living in the us since 1951 has been exposed to the fallout (www.nytimes.com , February 28, 2002).

Laxity to be probed

taking into account charges levelled against the French government, alleging that it had downplayed risks to public health after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, a judge has ordered that official documents be seized as part of a probe to establish the truth. The accusations have been made by the Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity (criirad).

N-plants face closure

taking a cue from Sweden and Germany, Belgium is going ahead with its plan to phase out the country's nuclear reactors by 2025. Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt recently said that his cabinet would ask parliament to pass a controversial bill to this effect. "We are going to proceed with the closure of nuclear plants between 2015 and 2025," he said and added, "It is a balanced and realistic decision."

N-plant weeded out

ON FEBRUARY 2, 2002, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) may have finally brought the curtain down on India's first pressurised heavy water nuclear reactor - Rajasthan Atomic Power Station's unit-I (RAPS-I). India's nodal regulatory body for its civil nuclear establishment took the decision to decommission RAPS-I by April 30, 2002, dubbing it as a "matter of caution".