Advances in Nuclear Science and Technology

The Editors have pleasure in presenting a further volume in the se­ ries to our international audience. Perhaps the most significant event of the passing year has been the publication by the IAEA of its study of the prob­ lem of continuing radiation protection in the lands surrounding Chernobyl. The major international project undertaken in 1990 and reported in 1991 is worth reading, not only for its assessment of how radiation protection intervention should be applied de facto in accident conditions, but equally for its account of the modern view of the philosophy of radiation protection. Some would, however, wish to argue that the acknowledgement by Iraq of its three-pronged development of nuclear weapons in conditions of secrecy and antagonism was equally significant and indeed as much a deter­ minant of the future of peaceful nuclear power as the Chernobyl accident. But it must be clear that the developments of weapons and electricity pro­ duction are not inescapably bound together; the Iraqi weapons program was not linked to any peaceful power development.