RIYADH, 19 April 2008 — The Regional Organization for the Protection of the Marine Environment (ROPME) has called for the establishing of a committee of experts to map out future strategies on how to deal with nuclear emergencies and radiation leaks in the region.
“It has become a must, as a regional organization to protect this region from different kinds of threats, to collectively prepare an action plan for radiation emergency so that the region would be able to overcome any radiation incident or leakage,” said ROPME, whose members include Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, in a recently released report. Referring to the need to monitor the problem, the report said, “It is very vital because we have some nuclear warships and submarines transiting in our shores every now and then.”
The problem is further exasperated by the proximity of Israeli nuclear facilities at Daymona. A leak there would affect other countries in the region.
“Moreover, the Gulf countries are willing now to head toward the utilization of nuclear energy for electricity power plants beside other uses for this energy, which needs to be widely promoted,” said the report, adding that several meetings have been convened by ROPME to discuss the subject of nuclear radiation in the past.
The report said that the need of each member state varies from another and, hence, each state should also establish its own radiation emergency plan. “On the regional level, an action plan should be implemented,” said the report, adding that an early warning and monitoring system is to be adopted to discover radiation in the atmosphere.
“It has been noticed that some of the member states, like Saudi Arabia do have such advanced systems within their research centers, while some other areas in the region suffer from lack of monitoring systems,” said the report. “Also, it is of importance to have nuclear and radiological laboratories for sampling analyses,” it added.
