BASIC held a side event during the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Ministerial Conference in Vienna on November 28, 2024, which was kindly sponsored by the United Kingdom.
The side event introduced BASIC’s new and relevant project, Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Technology Portal (PEANUT), funded by the United Kingdom. The audience engaged in a useful Q&A session, which provided valuable feedback on the development of the Portal. PEANUT will be a one-stop shop website for global policy communities to access reliable information on peaceful nuclear technologies, their comparative advantages and disadvantages, their synergies, and the contexts in which they are most useful, driven in the first instance by development needs relevant to agriculture, water, health, and the environment.
The project was created in response to identified problems which have posed a barrier to the uptake of nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes, including a lack of aggregated and accessible information on the available technologies and their applications, perception of complexity, and poorly communicated comparative benefits over non-nuclear technologies. As a result of these problems, the international community has faced missed opportunities to utilise these technologies to make progress towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as missed opportunities to make progress on implementing the Third Pillar of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
The PEANUT website will be designed for a policy community audience from developing and developed countries. It will enable policymakers to access reliable, objective, aggregated, and regularly updated information on various peaceful uses technologies and their potential for making progress on the SDGs and national development objectives. PEANUT is intended to be designed in a needs-first format, allowing its audience to search and find potential solutions from peaceful uses technologies by starting from the point of what their domestic needs or development goals may be. This will include technologies, their applications, interconnectedness with the SDGs, and radiological, integration, regulatory and proliferation challenges. A specific focus will be on lesser-discussed technologies connected to agriculture, water, health, and the environment.
PEANUT will help by enabling policy communities to make well-informed, evidence-based decisions about adopting available technologies. It will be a unique, practical, aggregated, living database of technologies and their applications that is continuously reviewed and updated.
The Conference brought together Ministers and Senior Officials from IAEA Member States and other stakeholders to discuss the role of nuclear science and technology in addressing challenges such as health, food security and safety, water resource management, and climate change. It highlighted the integral role of nuclear science and technology in finding solutions to tackle these challenges.
The Conference adopted a Ministerial Declaration which recognised the important role of nuclear science, technology, and applications in addressing the current and evolving challenges and contributing to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and achieving the SDGs; underscored the growing need and demand for further utilisation and upscaling of nuclear applications worldwide for peaceful purposes; recognised the importance of enhancing public awareness and understanding of the benefits brought about by nuclear science, technology, and applications; and highlights the important role and contributions of the IAEA and its programmes.