AFRICA - Africans interested in application of nuclear energy

Roma (Agenzia Fides)- African countries are showing growing interest for nuclear technology as a means for meeting their needs for energy and development. This emerged from a Conference on Nuclear Energy in Africa in Algiers 9-10 January which brought together delegates from 45 different African countries.
Besides electrical power, African countries want to use nuclear technology in agriculture, industry, medical-care, especially to fight pandemic diseases such as malaria, and in management of water resources.
Addressing the participants Mohammed El Baradei Director of the International Agency for Atomic Energy AIEA underlined the advantages of nuclear technology but he also said prudence was necessary because of the highly labile borderline between civil and military nuclear.
Africa is the only continent, except the Antarctic, which has no nuclear arms, after South Africa dismantled its small atomic arsenal (acquired despite an international embargo) and its structures for the uranium enrichment, at the end of the Apartheid regime.
With rising oil prices and in view of progressive depletion of hydro-carbons, several African countries are interested in using the nuclear option to meet energy needs. This tendency, present in other parts of the world, from Europe to Asia and the Americas, poses serious questions in the ecological field and also because of a possible diffusion of nuclear weapons.
Today the only nuclear centres in Africa are two nuclear reactors producing electrical power in Cape Town South Africa and reactors for research in Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Nigeria, Ghana, Democratic Congo, Morocco and South Africa. Some African countries want uranium enrichment technology to make sea water drinkable. Africa’s largest Uranium mines are in Democratic Congo, Niger, Gabon and South Africa. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 16/1/2007 righe 32 parole 360)