Is Israel abandoning its vision of civilian nuclear energy? Today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented on the matter for the first time, in an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan.
"The situation in Japan has certainly caused me to reconsider the projects of building civilian nuclear power plants," Netanyahu said, adding, "I have to tell you I was a lot more enthusiastic about it than I am now. In fact you'd have to give me a very good argument to do it, and fortunately we found natural gas."
Asked whether he would stop Israel's civilian nuclear program, Netanyahu replied, "I don't think we're going to pursue civil nuclear energy in the coming years. We'll go for the gas; I think we'll skip the nuclear."
Netanyahu said leaders would have to review expansion of the use of civilian nuclear energy, referring to the growing criticism in recent days of the safety of setting up nuclear power plants in various countries.
In direct contradiction of the prime minister's remarks, Ministry of National Infrastructures officials have reaffirmed the commitment to nuclear energy. "This is an existential interest of the country, because today, energy means water and food. The sun is not a stable energy source. The natural gas is wonderful, but vulnerable to breakdowns. We could find ourselves cut off from natural gas for months on end, and if we don’t want coal, then nuclear power is the only choice," the ministry's chief scientist Dr. Shlomo Wald told "Globes" today.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 17, 2011
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