Remarks by John Ritch Director General, World Nuclear Association
Biennial General Meeting World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) Seoul, Korea 19 March 2002
Let me begin by thanking Zack Pate and the entire WANO leadership for your kind invitation to participate in this conference. I have enormous respect for your organisation and I am delighted to be here with you.
I first came to Korea some 33 years ago, to command an infantry company that was guarding one mile of the DMZ. Peering at the North then through binoculars, I had no way of knowing that I would next see North Koreans many years later across a negotiating table in Geneva. This happened in 1993 when I became a member of the American delegation negotiating the agreement that froze North Korea?s nuclear program under the supervision of the IAEA.
After my year on the Korean frontier, I spent 6 months in Seoul as coach of the Korean Olympic basketball team. I developed then an enormous respect for the Korean people, but I am still amazed when I come here. Koreans in the last 50 years have lived through a national transformation that has few parallels in world history.
WANO's Indispensable Role
My admiration for WANO is easily explained. Since its creation in 1989, WANO has used private-sector diplomacy to make a superb contribution to the global nuclear industry. By building an institution to promote best practices at every nuclear power plant worldwide, you have laid the cornerstone of operational safety for a global clean-energy technology on which our entire world will depend heavily in the century ahead.
The World Nuclear Association has recognised the essential role you play by expressing support for WANO as a basic principle in our Charter of Ethics. This Charter ? embraced by our membership of some 100 nuclear enterprises in nearly 30 countries ? is a strong declaration of the principles and international legal obligations by which the nuclear industry operates worldwide. The Charter?s full text, including its endorsement of WANO as a pillar of the global industry, appears prominently on the WNA website.
An Expansive Nuclear Future
The title of my remarks today reflects a conviction that three powerful forces ? the needs of humanity, the imperatives of global environmental security, and the technology this industry represents ? are about to converge in a way that will produce an enormous growth in nuclear power production around the world.
It is already possible to envisage a future in which expanded nuclear power is working in combination with hydrogen-fuel-cell technology to produce a worldwide clean-energy revolution.
Indeed, it requires very little imagination to foresee that nuclear energy will eventually prove critical in providing three essentials to the world: not just electricity and hydrogen, but also clean water through desalination.
In the past, our industry has defended itself with a plea to "keep the nuclear option open". The time is nearing when we can offer a stronger vision ? of nuclear power as part of a clean-energy future. We represent a technology whose ultimate message is that pollution is not a necessary fact of life.
Against the backdrop of this industry?s daily struggles, I know that such visions can appear unrealistic. As my colleague Joe Colvin manoeuvres to overcome entrenched enemy forces in the battle of Yucca Mountain, or as Norm Askew climbs uphill to revitalise nuclear energy in Britain, those who express such grand optimism may seem slightly impractical or naïve.
But it is precisely because I expect that such battles will eventually become victories for nuclear energy that I see little distinction between realism and optimism about this industry?s global future.
A Full Agenda
On the way to that future, we have a challenging agenda of work to be done.
Nothing, you will agree, takes priority over the importance of this industry?s safe operation. We need only imagine the global psychological impact of a nuclear accident anywhere to conclude that this industry?s future depends on WANO?s continued success.
Also prominent on the nuclear agenda is progress on next-generation reactor technology and in maintaining a skills base for this industry until its economic resurgence stimulates an educational resurgence in nuclear science.
On the political and policy front, it is time to intensify our work everywhere in the realm of public understanding. As we move ever nearer to a major shift in the fortunes of nuclear energy, our task is to win large numbers of converts among environmentalists and to establish, once and for all, a political constituency that supports nuclear energy as a fundamental tool of sustainable development.
Barriers to Understanding
In the area of public understanding, we have faced two barriers:
In many countries, these two barriers tend to be associated with the two sides of the political spectrum. On the political left we see a resistance to nuclear technology, and on the political right a resistance to dealing decisively with the huge environmental and developmental problems that nuclear energy can help to solve.
Putting it starkly, the political right still hasn?t embraced the problem, and the left still hasn?t embraced the technology that is essential to the solution.
With both groups, however, our progress has been substantial; and we see on the horizon the possibility of a clear and lasting victory in establishing public support.
Educating Citizens, Journalists and Policymakers about Nuclear Energy
Regarding the first barrier ? the mixture of myths and fears that continue to cloud public discussion ? the clouds are starting to dissolve.
On the national level, organisations like the NEI in America ? and its many counterparts in other countries ? have fostered a growing enlightenment among citizens, journalists and policymakers.
A positive factor is that nuclear energy is now in the news. What we are seeing is a "constructive cycle" in which nuclear?s resurgence is creating news-and-debate, and news-and-debate are producing a valuable educational effect that serves to support the industry?s resurgence.
Something similar is occurring even in countries like Sweden, Germany and Belgium where anti-nuclear greens have gained power and ? by trying to convert green ideology into national policy ? have forced a public debate about the consequences of denuclearisation.
This process I liken to an "inoculation effect" whereby a dose of anti-nuclearism, once it works its way through the political system, helps to strengthen public appreciation of nuclear power?s unique clean-energy value. I am absolutely certain that none of those countries will abandon nuclear energy.
Adapting to a New Geopolitical Vision and Vocabulary
The second barrier to public understanding relates to the environmental context that surrounds nuclear energy.
The Kyoto Protocol represents one small step toward global action on the environment. But as its limited goals and faltering success underscore quite vividly, our governmental institutions are only just beginning to respond to the great global challenges that now demand a dominant role for nuclear power.
We understand this more clearly perhaps when we see that world politics are in the early stages of a profound transformation that began just a few years ago.
Before that, for almost a half-century, the world was consumed in a great geopolitical struggle that dominated the passions and priorities of people everywhere ? absorbing resources in vast quantity and shaping all political thought and action. In that era, even broad global issues of human need and economic development were viewed through a Cold War prism.
This psychology was so all consuming that when the Cold War ended, one well-respected American analyst proclaimed that the world had reached "the end of history". His point was that the age-old question of how society should be governed had been resolved in favour of free-market democracy. That may possibly be true. But most certainly it was not the end of history.
Indeed, one of the great positive consequences of the end of the Cold War is that the world has refocused ? and begun to comprehend that some of the most critical questions of human history, far from being behind us, have been dangerously neglected and are now pressing upon us with an urgency that intensifies by the day.
The Cold War was a struggle among nations about how to structure society within nations. In contrast, the challenges now gaining prominence are trans-national and truly global.
They concern nothing less than whether humankind can manage its exploding numbers without human misery on an unprecedented scale ? and without destabilising the very earthly environment that enabled civilisation to evolve.
These challenges are embodied in a few harsh and deeply unsettling facts that are now beginning to be recognized as the dominant realities of geopolitics ? realities from which no country can escape:
These facts ? facts still barely appreciated by many key policymakers ? tell us that if history is a river, mankind is about to hit the white water. These facts constitute a grim reality that must be taken into account in any rational Business Plan for Planet Earth.
From these facts come two very concise messages: that mankind is in desperate need of vast amounts of energy, and that this energy must be clean.
As this reality comes ever more plainly into view, it will increasingly be assimilated into national and international politics ? and into our national and international institutions of government. The recognition that current patterns of activity are simply not sustainable will, inexorably, point the world to an increasing reliance on nuclear power.
New concerns about terrorism ? rather than being a diversion from this shift toward a global perspective ? are likely instead to accelerate it. In America, the attacks produced a surge of patriotism. But in America as elsewhere, the overall effect is to reinforce a growing recognition of the inter-connectedness of global society.
James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, recently summarized this inter-connectedness: "There is no wall," he said. "We are [all] linked by trade, investment, finance, by travel and communications, by disease, by crime, by migration, by environmental degradation, by drugs, by financial crises and by terror."
Not only the World Bank but all institutions of government are now operating in a world where the distinction between national and trans-national is fading and in which the interdependence of global society ? which has so long been a slogan ? is now being assimilated as a reality by a new generation.
Goals of the World Nuclear Association
At the World Nuclear Association, our goal is to prepare for ? and to hasten the arrival of ? a future in which nuclear energy plays an expanding global role.
First, we are trying to build a global nuclear community ? of enterprises, large and small, encompassing all countries where nuclear power (or fuel) is being produced or where nuclear power production is even a prospect.
In the past year, WNA membership has grown by 50% and our geographical scope has broadened from 16 to 28 countries. Our members now represent over 90% of the non-generation side of the nuclear industry and about 60% of nuclear generation ? figures that we hope will continue to grow.
We are particularly interested in gaining the membership of those WANO members who are not yet members of the WNA.
We support our members through the WNA?s small secretariat in London and through even smaller regional offices we now aim to establish. We believe our members find value ? professionally and commercially ? in collaborating through our working groups on industry economics, trade, waste management, transport, decommissioning and nuclear fuel production.
In addition to fostering a global nuclear community among our members, we are working on their common behalf by promoting understanding of nuclear power and of the global needs that so urgently call for its expansion.
Much of such work is done by others ? at the national level. Our aim is to complement and support the efforts of national institutes and associations by providing information and advocacy at the trans-national level.
We place particular emphasis on our website as a comprehensive and accessible source of information on the entire global industry. The WNA website now receives ? from all around the world ? several thousand hits per day, heavily concentrated on a wide variety of information briefs that we constantly update.
In advocacy, we have two main targets:
One is the global media, where we try to identify and educate key journalists, editors and even editorial boards. We are also working to educate those who issue so-called "ethical investment" indices ? such as FTSE4good, the Financial Times index. Historically, these somewhat arbitrary ratings have taken it as a blind assumption that nuclear is unethical and have thus stigmatised our industry.
On the preparatory side of dealing with the media, we intend to work closely with the WANO Coordinating Centre in London to take all possible steps that would equip us to deal effectively with the public relations aspects of any future nuclear accident, however small. As Zack Pate warned yesterday, even an accident involving only low-level fuel damage ? and no danger to the public ? can hurt the industry if we are not skilful in explaining the reality promptly and in language that combines calmness with accuracy.
Our second main advocacy target is the realm of multilateral institutions ? ranging from the major development banks to the European and NATO Parliaments to the UN negotiations on climate change and sustainable development.
In this context, we have responded to the request from a large group of industry CEO?s by establishing what we call the ?Strategy Group on Sustainable Development?. This Strategy Group is now engaged in coordinating industry action vis-à-vis the Kyoto negotiations and the forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development.
In these multilateral negotiations, our minimum aim is to prevent nuclear from being stigmatised. Our more ambitious goal is to achieve a growing recognition of nuclear energy as an indispensable instrument of sustainable development.
Our principal adversaries in this task are anti-nuclear environmentalists operating from a base in environmental ministries ? even in many countries that have strong policies favouring nuclear power. Because these ministries have dominated the staffing of national delegations, we continue to face the serious danger that well-positioned minorities ? collaborating together at the multilateral level ? will hijack these major global negotiations, right under the noses of their pro-nuclear governments.
A central aim of anti-nuclear forces is to deny that nuclear energy is sustainable. To counter this with maximum impact, we aim to orchestrate presentations from all corners of the world ? including China, India, South Africa and Brazil ? to deliver the rebuttal message that nuclear energy has already been embraced as a sustainable development technology in the strategies of many key developing countries representing much of world population.
As a weapon in the expanding debate, we have introduced on our website a tool of persuasion we call the AutoEssay, which presents the case for nuclear energy in a concise but comprehensive form. The AutoEssay places nuclear energy in a global context and answers many common concerns. It takes only about 12 minutes to view ? either manually or on automatic ? and can be watched on a computer screen or projected as a presentation.
In the weeks ahead, we will make the AutoEssay available on our website in more than 20 languages. We see this as a small act of constructive "globalisation" in taking the case for nuclear energy to the public.
For those who may be interested, the written text of the AutoEssay is available in the display area in English, Russian, Japanese and Korean.
As a next step, we will soon distribute the AutoEssay on CD?s and mini-CD?s ? again in more than 20 languages. We anticipate producing these CD?s in large quantity as an aid to our nuclear partners around the world.
The Nuclear Future
Let me close with a glance to the future. This past week the Chinese government set a target of building 2,000 nuclear megawatts a year for the next 50 years. India envisages building 1,000 megawatts a year.
These are large and impressive numbers. But recognising that China and India represent 40% of humanity, let me offer the predication that as history unfolds, the actual numbers will be even higher ? perhaps far higher. Dreamer I may be, but I believe that in these countries, and many others, the combined needs of humanity and the environment will require it and that human wisdom will eventually conform to overwhelming human need.
Those of us who are working with enthusiasm to help promote such miracles may indeed be idealists. But our idealism is rooted in a confidence that this industry has its feet squarely on the ground ? in large part through the essential work that WANO serves to promote. For that, WANO deserves deep appreciation ? not simply from the nuclear industry but also from a larger world that will depend increasingly on the valuable technology you have done so much to strengthen.