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UGANDA is not rushing to build a nuclear power plant, it has been announced. Sources privy to the matter said the country will wait until its human resource capacity, legal and regulatory framework as well as the financial obligations are strengthened. "There is no competence in the country to handle nuclear power project and we cannot build this overnight," the sources added. The announcement comes at a time when IBI, a junior mining company from Canada, is pushing for the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Government for a nuclear power development in Uganda.

UGANDA is not rushing to build a nuclear power plant, it has been announced. Sources privy to the matter said the country will wait until its human resource capacity, legal and regulatory framework as well as the financial obligations are strengthened. "There is no competence in the country to handle nuclear power project and we cannot build this overnight," the sources added. The announcement comes at a time when IBI, a junior mining company from Canada, is pushing for the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Government for a nuclear power development in Uganda.

THE International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is satisfied with Uganda's commitment and progress in using nuclear energy in the health sector. "Uganda has so far implemented about 80% of the IAEA programmes for 2008. This is ahead of most of the African client countries. We are waiting for the next step of setting up a regulatory agency on nuclear use in the country," said IAEA cabinet chief Antonie van Dongen.

It takes about 10 years to build a nuclear power plant at a minimum cost of $10 billion (about 21.7 trillion) and at least 15 years to train a nuclear scientist to run a plant OTTAWA, CANADA-Experts have advised Uganda to go slow on a plan to generate electricity using uranium because it is a very costly venture. But the government says future economic development will depend on ability to attract business and industrialisation, which can only be possible with adequate supply of competitively priced electricity.

President Yoweri Museveni has thrust himself in the combative global debate on nuclear weapons by challenging western superpowers to dismantle their own stockpiles before pressing other countries to abandon nuclear ambitions. "How can some countries seek to monopolise the wielding of weapons of mass destruction while discouraging others from doing likewise," the President said on a visit to Germany, according to a press statement from State House. Mr Museveni said the United States, now engaged in feverish hostile exchanges with North Korea and Iranian leaders over nuclear weapons development, after all used its atomic bombs to shell Japanese industrial city of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Seaport in August, 1945 to shorten end of World War II.

"Two territorial partitions of the Twentieth Century have profoundly affected the Muslim world. One was the partition of India that gave the Muslim world the miracle of a major new member. The other was the partition of Palestine, which gave the Muslim world the challenge of a new adversary. Those two momentous events occurred within two consecutive years of each other - 1947 saw the birth of the Muslim state of Pakistan. In 1948 we witnessed the birth of the Jewish state of Israel. Islam in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries was never to be the same. But where does the nuclear factor fit into this complex equation? The Muslims of South Asia lived to witness the nuclearisation of their much larger and powerful neighbour, India. The Muslims of the Middle East lived to witness the nuclearisation of their small but powerful neighbour, Israel. Over time, the question even arose whether India and Israel would conspire to prevent the nuclearisation of Pakistan."