Thai Chemist Wants To See Wairakei Project

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31291, 10 February 1967, Page 2

Thai Chemist Wants To See Wairakei Project

A Thai chemist, who works on activation analysis at the office of the Atomic Energy Commission for Peace in Bangkok, can hardly wait to see New Zealand’s geothermal power project at Wairakei. She is Mrs Anong Nilubol, who is in Christchurch in the course of a South Pacific tour.

“We have nothing like Wairakei in Thailand, but we have plenty of water for power and many hydro-electric works,” she said in Christchurch yesterday.

Mrs Nilubol is head of the chemistry division of her country’s Atomic Energy Commission, and her work is research and analysis.

“We are studying how atomic energy can be applied to produce power for the future; it is not needed at present,” she said. “And we are doing research on how atomic energy can be used'to improve agriculture and industry; and how it can be applied to medicine. Its possibilities are unlimited.” In Christchurch Mrs Nilubol will visit the National Radiation Laboratory. The director (Mr G. E. Roth) she knew in Bangkok when he was a consultant for the World Health Organisation there last year. Pooling Ideas

“I am looking for new ideas and to study problems here so that we can exchange papers and knowledge,” she said. “I am on an official visit as well as a holiday.”

A. B.Sc. graduate of the University of Thailand, Mrs Nilubol gained her master’s degree at the University of Maryland. Although she holds a high position in a man’s world of atomic energy research, Mrs Nilubol has a deep concern for the welfare of women in her country. She is secretary-general of the National Council of Wo-

men in Thailand, a vice-presi-dent of the Siamese Association of University Women and chairman of its international relations committee.

One of the council’s projects is a women’s voluntary corps for community development.

“In Thailand development has been concentrated round the capital city,” she said. “Women live in very primitive conditions in the villages. So we are trying to raise their standards of living.” In a suburb near Bangkok the corps began by teaching women handcrafts sb they could earn money by selling their work. To help mothers who wanted to work outside their homes the corps opened nursery schools for pre-school children, provided lunch for them and looked after them for the day.

At Trok Chan, a village not far from Bangkok, a demonstration home was set up where women were taught homecraft, child health, hygiene and how to make clothes for their children.

The corps plans to open another village demonstration home this year to teach women to grow plants, how to use fertilisers, and how to raise ducks.

At the airport to meet Mrs Nilubol yesterday was her “adopted” niece and next-door-neighbour from Bangkok, Miss Vannee Chaovanan. A pupil at Cashmere High School in its English class for South-east Asian students, Miss Chaovanan will do a commercial course before returning home.

Several Christchurch women who visited Bangkok in 1958 after attending a conference of the Pan-Pacific and South-east Asia Women’s Association in Tokyo will remember Mrs Nilubol, who drove them round her city. They will meet her again this morning at the home of Mrs W. Grant, of Konini street, who has kept in touch with her.

Mrs Nilubol is travelling with her husband and they will visit Australia, Malaysia and Singapore as well as New Zealand.