UN Agency to drop nuclear bombshell

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DISCLAIMER - Of course this was an April Fools joke. But it raises a serious issue that the UN uses tax payers money to promote dirty, dangerous nuclear power.

Read more about our campaign against nuclear power.

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In a short internal memo dated today and intended for circulation to staff at the Agency, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei outlines his intention to reframe the agency's mission statement:

"Whilst I alone cannot change the mandate of the Agency, I am convening a panel of experts under my direction to prepare a report for the next General Conference in September. Their remit will be to find the best approach for the agency to become a world leader and advocate of renewable energy sources"

Our nuclear expert and regular IAEA watcher, William Hill stated:

"At first we didn't believe it, we thought it was a joke. Now that it has sunk in we welcome the acknowledgement of the fundamental hypocrisy of the IAEA's dual role and the responsible recognition that it was unsustainable. We are disappointed that immediate change has not been made and further dismayed at the likelihood that the consultative period will be dominated by industry interests. We will, however, almost certainly open a bottle of champagne today to mark this historic development."

We have long been  critics of the IAEA's conflicting dual role. On the one hand, it is in charge of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and leading member states towards nuclear disarmament. But it also promotes civil nuclear power programs that provide the means to build nuclear weapons.

Only yesterday we received a call from an agency insider claiming he had proof of dramatic developments at the IAEA. Identifying himself only as Art Sixnofour he set up an elaborate hand-over of the leaked document in a Vienna park.

While we have not been in possession of the document long enough to fully analyse the implications and confirm the details of the proposed plan, we believe its explosive contents justified rapid release of the document.

It is too soon to assume the Agency's mission will change but we can only applaud ElBaradei's courage in seeking to remove the foolhardy contradiction at the heart of the current IAEA mission statement. The world will be a safer place if his proposal is adopted.

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This might have been a joke for April 1st, but it makes a serious point. By promoting the dangerous myth of Atoms for Peace and nuclear power, the IAEA is responsible for spreading the very things it seeks to control: nuclear weapons technology and materials.

Greenpeace believes that the only way to stop the spread of nuclear weapons is for the nuclear weapons states to disarm and for the world to reject the technologies and materials used to produce them, by changing to promoting peaceful renewable energy sources the IAEA would be acting to combat the two most pressing threats facing the world today, climate change and nuclear proliferation.