Scientific Traffic

1994/10/01 Aizpurua Sarasola, Joxerra Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Energia

Radioactive fuel trafficking has become a recent trend. It will be difficult to know if the fuel obtained in the black market is to build nuclear bombs or power nuclear power plants. However, considering that in Europe there are more nuclear power plants than anywhere and that fuel reserves, that is, uranium reserves, are 150,000 tons (therefore scarce) and that the atomic war is nowadays quite far away, I believe that the traffic of radioactive fuels has as its objective nuclear fission centers.

Informants also tell us that plutonic traffic was born when it was the Soviet Union. Its nuclear power plants are dominated by chaos, so the mafias that traffic with plutonium or technology in general are different. We know that the technology developed in the Soviet Union and the trained scientists were leading players in the past decade. Today, however, local workshops, nuclear power plants, etc. have become largely technological landfills, as there are no qualified personnel to maintain such technology and factories.

Where are the most cutting-edge scientists of the past decade?

I have found the answer to this question faster than expected after reading several scientific journals, and I have to recognize that the answer has been worrying. Apparently, scientists have emigrated. Scientific emigration is normal for those who live in the Spanish state. In addition, for the scientist it is an honor to study in foreign universities. But what has happened in the former Soviet Union has broken all the marks. In some ways, a tombola has been organized with local researchers and scientists, whose buyers have been Western universities and research centers. The price paid has been the same as when a store fails.

During my visit to the Swiss CERN I had the opportunity to demonstrate what was said above. In addition, in it I detected another problem, that is, that being pointers the researchers who brought with two soda, why keep local scientists who have such high salaries and a scientific level equal or lower than the previous ones?

However, this problem is very small compared to the one that is occurring in the former Soviet Union, where the flight of scientists is turning the industry of yesteryear into a technological landfill, sometimes very dangerous as is the case of nuclear power plants.

To address this situation, the rich Western states have begun a deal with the member states of the Soviet Union, and although the talks or agreements reached have occurred in silence, it seems to me that we are in a serious political and economic mortgage. Therefore, I consider these specific solutions to be future investments in conflict. In addition, in the current situation, I would say that the global solution is neither difficult nor impossible, while the foundations of science and technology are not altered, that is, science and technology are not put at the service of development and the service of man. This shift in focus does not have to be against development, but as long as development is a mere technocracy or productivity does.