Opening Remarks World Nuclear Fuel Conference 2011 Chicago / 6 April John Ritch, WNA Director General Ladies and gentlemen, I offer you a warm welcome to this seventh World Nuclear Fuel Cycle conference. NEI and WNA began co-hosting these meetings starting with Madrid back in 2004, and from there we have continued an annual rotation – from Europe to America to Asia, and back again. Chicago marks our third WNFC in America. This would be our eighth conference rather than our seventh, but we missed last year when an Icelandic volcano, dormant for 200 years and expected to remain so, suddenly erupted with an outpouring that blocked international air travel for a week. Our Munich meeting, scheduled to occur in 2010, will now be held in a future year instead. That unexpected disruption a year ago offered a gentle reminder of Nature’s power – and carried just the modest price tag of widespread inconvenience. This year Nature again demonstrated her capacity for violence and exacted a toll far more severe. From the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan on March 11th, it now appears that the death count may reach 25,000 Japanese citizens while the economic loss may total 250 billion dollars. This is a natural disaster of historic magnitude, and our sympathy extends to the entire Japanese nation. Our compassion flows particularly to our Japanese colleagues, some of whom have laboured on to fulfil their duties despite frightening uncertainty, or even dire knowledge, concerning the fate of their families. We are of course acutely aware of the accident at Fukushima, which, though apparently limited in harmful effect, has captured the attention of the international media to an extent that has come close to eclipsing its coverage of the real catastrophe from which Japan is struggling to emerge. Reporting less compulsively sensationalistic would surely have focussed more on the widespread suffering and tragedy experienced by thousands of Japanese families; and more balanced journalism would have better portrayed the remarkable qualities the Japanese people have shown in the face of adversity. In their courage and collective civility in responding to national calamity, Japan has demonstrated traits of national character worthy of wider attention and admiration. We can wonder how many other nations could offer such a model. Nonetheless, we in the global nuclear industry must now face a hard reality. After years of steady advance in gaining public confidence, the cause of nuclear power as the world’s pre-eminent clean-energy technology has suffered a serious blow. We may rightly decry the imbalance, inaccuracy and unfairness in much of the reporting of Fukushima, but we cannot deny that it has inflicted a real scar on the public perception of nuclear power. In regaining ground that was hard-won over years and quickly lost in days, we have our work cut out for us. As we undertake to regain public confidence, our essential tools will remain, as they have been in the past, a combination of reliable performance and public education. In demonstrating reliable performance, we must act on two fronts: • First, we must engage with national governments and regulatory authorities in systematic efforts to review, and where necessary revise, the standards and procedures whereby we defend nuclear plants against even the most unlikely geological, tsunami and weather events. In one form or another, nuclear authorities in every nation will now undertake such reviews, and we should engage – openly and constructively – in identifying and adopting all reasonable measures to enhance nuclear safety still further. Given the high standards already in effect, it is likely to prove true, as a practical matter, that relatively few changes will result. But the very process – of engaging in comprehensive reviews, demonstrating high standards, and making changes where appropriate – will be essential in rebuilding public confidence. • Second, we should undertake parallel work on safety enhancement within our industry. Here WANO has primacy as the industry organization focussed fully and solely on promoting uniform adherence to the highest standards of safe operational performance at all nuclear power plants worldwide. WNA recognizes WANO’s crucial role in our Charter of Ethics, which commits us to full support of WANO’s mission and work. In the aftermath of Fukushima, as WANO works to galvanize a cooperative global response by nuclear operators everywhere, WNA will maintain that commitment; and, insofar as our wider membership and higher public posture can prove valuable, we will try to complement and buttress WANO’s effort by any means the industry deems useful. Our aim is to cooperate with WANO in an optimum division of labour. With our second tool, public education, our industry must continue, as before Fukushima, to engage with the public and with policymakers on multiple levels: locally through individual companies, nationally through national associations, and internationally through WNA. As before, we must be assiduous in explaining the nature of nuclear power and building awareness of the impressive edifice of self-regulation, national regulation and international standards that governs industry operations. And now, in the aftermath of Fukushima, we must meet the further and compelling challenge of explaining just what happened at the Daiichi plant and presenting, in accurate and persuasive terms, the measures by which the industry is acting on a broad front to fortify all needed barriers against the recurrence of any such accident, anywhere. In performing this important work on the international front, WNA’s already well-established educational role has greatly intensified since March 11th, when both our web-based Public Information Service and World Nuclear News quickly became major reference points for many thousands around the world. These ranged from journalists and policymakers to our own industry colleagues, all seeking reliable information on a rapidly unfolding event of intense global interest. We could not hope to halt the media frenzy – no force of rationality could have blocked that stampede. But we have laboured hard to disseminate facts and perspective via the WNA and WNN websites, as well though scores of background and print interviews, and dozens of appearances on radio and television. We will continue in this effort. In such circumstances, we cannot hope to quantify the value we provide. But we may gauge it to some extent by imagining the absence of a widely respected voice representing the international nuclear industry. It is long been my concern that we still find more than a few enterprises in our industry with a parochial mind-set of splendid isolation that refuses to recognize the benefit they derive from such a voice and to participate in sharing the load. Surely no event more drastic than Fukushima is needed to underscore how interconnected are the fortunes of companies everywhere in the nuclear world. The adage that we are in this together is now in neon lights. We must now gird ourselves for a post-Fukushima world in which our industry raises the level of its game, both in demonstrating reliable performance and in the work of effective public education. But we can begin this climb with considerable confidence in the assets we bring to the quest. Those assets are two-fold and they are powerful: • First is the inherent merit of nuclear energy as a uniquely capable clean-energy technology. • Second is the stern global reality – a combination of vast human need and stark environmental necessity – that compels our world forward toward an ever wider use of this technology. In the years preceding Fukushima, most major nations in the world reviewed their energy and environment policies and, with few exceptions, came inexorably to the same conclusion: that, for reasons of energy independence and environmental responsibility, nuclear power must play a central role in their energy strategies for the 21st Century. Fukushima has done nothing to alter the facts that led so many different nations to a common nuclear path: o World population will continue its explosive growth – from 3 billion in 1960 to nearly 7 billion today and onward toward 9 billion by the middle of this century. o World energy demand will, in the lifetimes of our children, increase by a factor of three. o Our world’s best climate scientists will continue to warn, with ever greater urgency, that we must, even as global energy consumption triples, cut worldwide carbon emissions by 80% – or risk changes in Earth’s climate so radical as to threaten much of civilization. o And, even after Fukushima, it will remain true that the world’s nations can achieve this global clean-energy revolution only with a vastly expanded use of nuclear power. Events at Fukushima cannot change these global realities. My grandfather on my dad’s side came from the great state of Montana in the northwest of our country, and he was very much a man of the Old West. As a youngster in the late 19th Century, he was a cowboy on a Montana ranch that may have been about the size of Luxembourg. Later in life he grew to be a quite literate man and became Montana’s state historian and its leading poet (although, I confess, perhaps its only one). But he always carried with him the philosophy and lessons gained early in life. He once said, “A man never forgets getting kicked by a mule, assuming he survives it, and after that he’ll always do his damnedest to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” As an industry, we have just been kicked by a mule, and our task now is to not only to make sure it doesn’t happen again but also to rebuild confidence, among the broad public which depends on us, that it won’t happen again. This is no easy task, but we can pursue it with pride and accomplish it with confidence. For our world still needs nuclear power – on a vast scale – and it still needs a responsible and advancing industry to provide it. I thank you, and again extend to you a cordial welcome.