IN a joint venture, the Belgium Government and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) organized the first global nuclear summit in Brussels (March 21-22) at the head and of State and Government level. On this historic eve, world leaders came together to reaffirm their commitment to nuclear energy as a way to reduce carbon emissions and fulfil the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs). Today, both the developing and developed world encounter with the energy challenges posed by the emerging climate change impact. Given the limited resources, Pakistan is fighting hard to mitigate the detrimental effects of climate change.
The Greenhouse effect challenge: Arguably, today, nuclear power yields 10% of the world’s electricity. In order to counter climate change, there is an impending demand of greater amounts of clean and reliable energy resources. So far, thirty countries operate nuclear power plants, while more than 24 states look forward to acquiring nuclear energy to meet their power and climate needs. A greenhouse gas is capable of absorbing infrared radiation, thereby trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. This is known as the greenhouse effect and ultimately leads to global warming. CO2 is one of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Technological development and the evolving energy mix mean that we can mitigate the climate change impact via renewable energy projects.
IAEA Director General, Rafael Mariano Grossi, underlined the need for action: “Acknowledging nuclear’s necessity isn’t enough. It’s on political leaders to foster environments that encourage nuclear development. Without decisive action, the potential for nuclear to support the green transition could be lost’’. Against this backdrop, more than 30 nations–-belonging to Global North and South –signed the pledge to expand the use of nuclear energy beyond their needs of strategic security for the betterment of humanity in order to mitigate climate change that poses scowling threat to global food security.
They affirmed their commitment ‘’to work to fully unlock the potential of nuclear energy by taking measures such as enabling conditions to support and competitively finance the lifetime extension of existing nuclear reactors, the con-struction of new nuclear power plants and the early deployment of advanced reactors.” This argument posits logic: Given the comprehensive measures of technical maintenance and guidance enriched with nuclear safety and security of the nuclear power plants, nuclear energy is intrinsically one of the safest energy technologies we have had so far.
The summit leitmotif: While nuclear summits provide opportunities for countries to step beyond the limitations of consensus to highlight steps vis-à-vis the nuclear safety and security threats, they also provide the opportunity to dis-cuss different nuclear projects: The Brussels Summit was held in the wake of the historic climate agreement signed– at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai in December 2023–which called for accelerating its de-ployment along with other low carbon energy sources.
Consequent upon fallowing the launch of the IAEA’s Atoms4NetZero initiative, the Summit included panel discus-sions with experts showcasing how innovation is further enhancing the competitiveness, usability and sustainability of nuclear power as well as opportunities and challenges in establishing a level playing field for funding and financing nuclear power projects. The IAEA’s new annual nuclear power outlook high case projection predicts installed nuclear capacity will more than double to 890 gigawatts by 2050, compared to 369 gigawatts today. This represents an almost 25% increase from the Agency’s prediction in 2020, with its projections revised up for a third consecutive year.
IAEA’s atoms4 food: Global food security faces mounting pressures due to the escalating demands on natural re-sources and risks associated to climate change, both of which threaten the overall sustainability of food systems at large. IAEA’s Atoms4Food is an initiative to help countries boost food security and to tackle growing hunger.
Pakistan role in peaceful use of nuclear energy: Since 1954, Pakistan has been engaged with the international move-ment for peaceful uses of nuclear energy and it is committed to achieving the UN SDGs for human security and pros-perity. Addressing the Summit, Pakistan Foreign Minister Ishque Dar affirmed that environment-friendly Nuclear Energy is the main need of the future. He advocated that clean energy is a cost effective energy. He further asserted that with immense power density, negligible carbon footprints and no Greenhouse emissions, nuclear energy offers a viable solution for the future.
Needless to say, for decades, Pakistan has been ranked as one of the seven most vulnerable countries to climate change. Recently, in a joint collaboration both the IAEA and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Na-tions (FAO), developed an emergency support package for Pakistan to assist the country in applying nuclear science to better understand the flood’s impact on soils, crops and the potential spread of animal and zoonotic diseases. Under the SIFC supervision, Pakistan agriculture is making a new boost.
More notably, Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) is committed to enhancing the role of peaceful nuclear technology to fulfil its domestic agriculture and food needs profoundly increased in recent decades. As a responsible nuclear state, Pakistan is seriously involved in enhancing its indigenous use of civil energy. In the pursuit of acquiring green energy to achieve the SDGs goals, Pakistan is already engaged with China via CPEC projects, with the US via US Aids, and with Saudi Arabia via G2G level talks. So far, Pakistan has installed nuclear energy capacity of more than 3,500 megawatts. With China’s cooperation, Islamabad is building another nuclear power plant Chashma-5.
By 2030, Pakistan aims to generate 8,800 MWe from nuclear energy, which would have nuclear energy account for 20 percent of Pakistan’s total energy. In order to achieve this objective and to realign our needs and capabilities to meet the GOP28 goals, Pakistan justifiably seeks external collaboration with foreign donors from nuclear industry.
