Environment ministry sets comprehensive plan for radioactive contamination areas in Iraq

Local

1-03-2022, 12:39

Baghdad-INA

The Ministry of Environment announced today, Tuesday, preparing a comprehensive national plan for areas of radioactive contamination, while indicating that a study to construct a nuclear reactor was sent to the Prime Minister's Office

“The center has prepared a national plan for all registered areas and presented it to the Secretary General of the cabinet, which is only waiting for the budget to be launched to start," Sabah Al-Husseini, director general of the Ministry's Radiation Prevention Center, told The Iraqi News Agency (INA).

“The budget is very small compared to what foreign companies require if contracted, as it requires twice the amount requested by the ministry once the rays are cleared without decontamination," he said, adding that "the ministry has requested $4 million for all of Iraq.”

“The executive branch is the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Decontamination Directorate, and the Iraqi Radiology Confiscation Authority, in cooperation between national security, intelligence and the provinces concerned to support the ministry," he said.

“The commission has been commissioned at the Radiation Prevention Center to study the extent to which Iraq benefits from the construction of a nuclear reactor for peaceful and desalination purposes," Al-Husseini said.

"There are sites that are proposed to work on them, such as Basra, which will benefit very much from the file because it will solve the issues of energy and desalination," he said

"The ministry is a regulatory body, not an executive, and is responsible for setting standards that correspond to the International Energy Agency and is keen to protect the citizen and the environment from radiation, not an executive until it makes offers," he said, adding that "energy files are usually provided exclusively to the Ministry of Electricity."