The International Atomic Energy Agency recruiting spies?

The official mission of the IAEA, an agency of the United Nations, is that it quote “seeks to promote the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies.”

What it is actually seeking to promote, with unprecedented aggression, is a massive expansion of nuclear energy. This is the exact opposite of “peaceful” and presents some real proliferation problems the agency seems entirely willing to ignore.

A spy in Vienna

   By Linda Pentz Gunter  March 17, 2024  beyondnuclearinternational,  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/03/17/a-spy-in-vienna/ 

The IAEA is recruiting, but it’s barking up all the wrong trees

Note: On March 21st the International Atomic Energy Agency will be hosting what it bills as the “First Nuclear Energy Summit” in Brussels, Belgium, co-hosted with the Belgian government. We will have something to “show” and “tell” about that next week.

I have recently received three offers via LinkedIn to apply for different job openings at the International Atomic Energy Agency. Each time, the representative from the IAEA who pitched me wrote that: “I just came across your profile, and it caught my attention”, then described the job itself and why my skill set was ideally suited. Really?

Caught their attention, yes, although evidently they didn’t actually read what is on my LinkedIn page. Unless the IAEA is looking to “turn” me, because I presume what they don’t want is a dissenting mole in their midst. That would mean the IAEA had suddenly developed a conscience.

 It was tempting, though, given the goodies thrown in.

“As this position is based in Vienna, Austria, we would support you with multiple benefits, including relocation, rental subsidy, visa support, education grant for your children, tax-free salary, health insurance, and many more,” read each invitation.

Wow, I am in the wrong job! But for all the right reasons.

The official mission of the IAEA, an agency of the United Nations, is that it quote “seeks to promote the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies.”

What it is actually seeking to promote, with unprecedented aggression, is a massive expansion of nuclear energy. This is the exact opposite of “peaceful” and presents some real proliferation problems the agency seems entirely willing to ignore.

And yet, even as Grossi sounds ever more urgent alarms about the potential for nuclear catastrophe in Ukraine (despite his agency’s mission statement that nuclear energy is intrinsically safe, secure and peaceful), he is busy promoting the expansion of nuclear power around the world with evangelical zeal.

Currently, the IAEA’s proudest headline amongst its 2023 highlights and achievements is that nuclear power “made history at COP28.” 

It’s referring, of course to the ludicrous and widely panned announcement, by 22 countries at the time, during last winter’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai, that the world should triple its nuclear capacity by 2050, something that has absolutely zero chance of happening. Nor should it.

This followed an October 2023 IAEA press release, that trumpeted, “First-Ever Nuclear Energy Summit to be Held in Brussels in March 2024.” It will mark a gathering of the cabal that supports the IAEA’s misleadingly titled campaign, Atoms4NetZero, which of course is impossible. Nuclear power involves uranium mining, fuel manufacture, transportation, construction and waste production, none of which is now — or ever will be — net zero.

The Brussels summit, says the IAEA, will see “leaders from around the world” gathering “to highlight the role of nuclear energy in addressing the global challenges to reduce the use of fossil fuels, enhance energy security and boost economic development”. 

Again, none of this is achievable. Nuclear power, given its extreme costs and long timelines (never mind the dangers and human rights violations) can only impede and slow reductions in fossil fuel use by getting in the way of cleaner, safer, cheaper and faster renewable energy implementation whose technology, unlike the fantasy fission and fusion reactors of the future, is here now.

The IAEA has a long history as a nuclear apologist, promoter and defender. After the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear explosion, the agency was notorious in downplaying and even concealing the true health impacts of the disaster. It effectively has a gag order on the World Health Organization, which must be subordinate* to the IAEA on matters of radiation and health — something the IAEA is not qualified to assess. And yet, the IAEA effectively censors the WHO in its own area of expertise!

The IAEA was lurking around the halls of the Second Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in New York last November. On November 30, a declaration was published wrapping up the meeting that was abruptly revised and re-issued the next day. The new version contained a clause (27) missing from the previous day’s statement that read:

“We once again emphasize that nothing in the TPNW shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of its States Parties to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.”

The burning need to re-emphasize what is effectively the IAEA’s mission apparently came on the initiative of Vietnam, although there was no dissent. How ironic that it was Vietnam, a country that has considered building massive nuclear power plants in the coastal province Ninh Thuan through contracts with Russia and Japan. For now, both schemes have been canceled. Vietnam will be one of the first countries to be inundated by climate crisis-induced sea-level rise and yet, despite its eighteen hundred miles of vulnerable coastline, the country is once again toying with the idea of new nuclear power plants, this time both small modular and floating off-shore reactors.

Needless to say I won’t be pursuing a tax-free life in Vienna, or at least not with the IAEA. I’ll actually be in Brussels with something to say about their ridiculous summit, along with a network of activists from different organizations across Europe.

And at Beyond Nuclear — as well as on my LinkedIn page — we will continue to call out the hypocrisies and conflicts of interest of the IAEA.

*The Independent WHO vigils are no longer active.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International.

March 18, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties