DOHA: The nuclear deal between the world powers and Iran will help prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, said Anil Anand (pictured), India’s veteran nuclear scientist.
“It will stop other countries in the Middle East to build nuclear weapons as the deal restricts Iran to using uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes,” said the 75-year-old who built the ‘Nuclear Propulsion Programme’ for India’s future nuclear submarine fleet at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). Anand’s career spanned over four decades (1961-2001) at BARC, India’s premier nuclear research facility based in Mumbai.
On April 2, after months of negotiations, Iran and the six powers agreed on the broad outline of a deal to impose tighter controls on Tehran’s nuclear programme in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. The deal was a result of eight days of negotiations between Iran and six powers — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US.
“Nuclear weapons should act as a deterrent and should never be used. Now countries have amassed nuclear weapons which are enough to destroy the whole world 10 times,” Anand told this daily.
“It is better to have more nations with nuclear capabilities than having one country with nuclear arms. More nations with nuclear arms mean there is no monopoly and it makes the world balanced,” he added.
A staunch supporter of nuclear energy, Anand said the world should move further in the area of nuclear research. Despite the 2011 nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi and the 1986 incident at Chernobyl, he believes nuclear energy can play a major role in serving mankind.
“Chemical and biological plants are equally harmful in case of any accident. The world knows Bhopal gas tragedy in India killed thousands of people. A lot of people have been killed during mining of coal, a major source of power around the world,” said Anand.
Anand is in Doha to release his book The Second Strike which is based on his personal and professional life. He said nuclear energy carries a negative perception in the mind of the general public because of atom bombs but there are many peaceful ways of using it. “There is a sense of negativity around nuclear energy because of the atom bombs dropped in Nagasaki and Hiroshima during the Second World War. But the other side of the coin is that these bombs stopped that war. “Not many are aware that nuclear energy is playing a great role in the field of medical science. Cobalt-60, a radioactive isotope produced in nuclear reactors, is used by doctors around the world to treat cancer. It is also used to sterilise disposable medical devices. Around 24 percent of power is produced from nuclear energy. France derives over 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy.”
The Peninsula
