Mohamed El-Sayed examines scientific concerns over a revived nuclear programme Gamal Mubarak's 21 September announcement to the National Democratic Party (NDP) that Egypt was seeking to revive its nuclear programme provoked a seemingly endless round of frenzied speculation and analysis. Amid the immediate clamour, the focus on the manner of the announcement, it was all too easy to become lost in presentational rather than substantive issues. Now, more than two weeks on, and it is the voices of nuclear experts, rather than the political pundits, that are increasingly being raised as they question the practicality of reviving a programme all but abandoned in 1986 and lament the loss of expertise that occurred in the interim. Many atomic energy experts fear Egypt may have wasted too much time in opting to resume its push for nuclear energy. Hamed Rushdi, former head of the Nuclear Energy Authority, argues that it is misleading for government officials to claim Egypt has "cadres capable of implementing the nuclear project". "Most of them left the country years ago following the shelving of the nuclear project." Current levels of expertise, he says, are far from adequate, and lag behind the latest nuclear technologies. Mahmoud Barakat, head of the Arab Agency for Atomic Energy, agrees. "By halting the programme in the 1980s, Egypt lost an army of scientists and technicians who had been prepared for the programme. Most of them emigrated to Western or else Arab countries." Barakat, who confirms that up to $30 million were spent in the 1980s on studies to identify the most suitable site for a nuclear power station, believes "the government never provided convincing reasons for its halting of the programme and capitalised on the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in order to convince people that reactivating the programme was too risky." Salaheddin Ibrahim, former head of the UN inspection team, echoes the arguments of many political commentators when he claims the announcement by the NDP that the programme is to be revived "served partisan rather than national interests". "Our need for nuclear energy now," he adds, "is less than it was in the 1980s given the discovery of huge reserves of natural gas." Why, wonders Ibrahim, has the government waited until now to revive the programme when "international organisations place crippling restrictions on building reactors". "It has become very expensive for a developing country to enter the nuclear field and it is difficult to think why the government decided to wait until such a critical time to revive the programme." "The foreign company commissioned to provide feasibility studies in the 1980s concluded that Al-Dabaa was -- as it remains -- the best place in Egypt to build a nuclear reactor," says Barakat. Yet scientists now fear that the area has been earmarked for tourist development and the government will seek to relocate the project. Minister of Energy and Electricity Hassan Yunis insists the government is simply thinking ahead. "We have to consider alternatives to oil and gas when oil reserves will be exhausted within ten years and current gas reserves are not expected to last beyond 2040." "Egypt was not alone in rethinking its nuclear strategy following the Chernobyl disaster. Many countries abandoned their programmes. It is only now that those earlier safety issues have been successfully addressed that we can reconsider the nuclear option." Nor is Yunis convinced by the arguments of scientists that Egypt lacks the necessary expertise. "We haven't lost a lot," he says, "and have the human and technical resources necessary to help us in the project. We will not be starting from scratch since we already have a programme for building nuclear plants." "The country hasn't run out of nuclear experts," Ali Islam, head of the Nuclear Energy Authority, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "We still have excellent technicians who operate two research reactors that have been working for years. Yes, many experts left the country to work in the West or in Arab countries but they did not constitute the core of scientific expertise." Islam added that the authority would "welcome back scientists who want to return and work on the programme though the intention is to rely on younger experts who will be operating the proposed plant in the decades to come". Islam dismisses concerns over the site of the project. "The tourist developments the press made so much of are located 28 kilometres away from Al-Dabaa, so neither will be affected by the other. Egypt's first nuclear plant will be built in Al-Dabaa though we will look at other sites when we think about building other reactors." Meanwhile, in a televised interview on Sunday, Gamal Mubarak stressed that, "there has been no deal with any international party to reactivate the nuclear programme and everything that has been said about such a deal is ungrounded speculation." Discussions about nuclear energy, he said, had been ongoing within the NDP for two years now. "The nuclear programme is one of the alternatives being studied within the framework of Egypt's long-term energy strategy. The issue shouldn't be looked at from a partisan perspective but from a national one." Yunis announced in the Shura Council on Monday that a new law regulating the nuclear programme was currently being prepared. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif held a meeting on Tuesday with the Supreme Council for Energy to discuss issues related to the programme ahead of a ministerial meeting, to be chaired by President Hosni Mubarak, that will review Egypt's nuclear options.
