SINGAPORE – One way to use nuclear technology is to target bugs. Tsetse flies, to be precise.
Nuclear applications can be used to sterilise tsetse flies in parts of Africa, where they transmit African sleeping sickness, said Ambassador Glyn Davies, the permanent representative of the United States to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Curbing insect reproduction helps combat the disease, which affects thousands on the continent and can cause brain damage.
Part of the work of the IAEA, which is probably more widely known for its non-proliferation mandate, “is to help countries get access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes”, said Mr Davies, who was in Singapore this week for discussions on what the agency calls Technical Cooperation projects.
Other peaceful nuclear applications include the management of water resources and the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
“Singapore is important because it is a developed country that can be used in conjunction with the IAEA to train people in developing countries in nuclear medicine,” said Mr Davies.
Singapore started a feasibility study on nuclear energy earlier this year. However, the use of radioactive materials in medicine in Singapore goes back to the ’70s, said Dr Anthony Goh, who heads Singapore General Hospital’s department of nuclear medicine and positron emission tomography.
Singapore receives fellows and trainees from all over the world, especially Asian countries, and organises regional training courses and workshops, said Dr Goh, elaborating on how Singapore doctors collaborate with the IAEA.
Among other things, “individual doctors and physicists at SGH have helped set up nuclear medicine services, for example in Mongolia and Myanmar,” he said, adding that the benefits of collaboration included being able to tap on IAEA expertise.
Dr Goh, who met Mr Davies during his visit here, said that nuclear applications are also being used in the ship-building and oil industries here.
In a landmark speech in April last tear, US President Barack Obama envisioned a world without nuclear weapons. The promotion of peaceful uses of nuclear applications is directly linked to this move away from nuclear arms, said Mr Davies.
Venessa Lee
Online Today