Remarks by John RitchDirector General, World Nuclear Association
Helsinki, Finland29 April 2002
It is a great pleasure for me to visit Helsinki, and I much appreciate the hospitality of Juhani Santaholma on behalf of the Finergy Federation.
As it happens, I have been a cordial friend of your Prime Minister for about 25 years. When we were both much younger, Paavo Lipponen was a frequent visitor to Washington as part of an exchange programme for "young political leaders". I was then an adviser to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, specialising in East-West relations, and always found myself on Paavo's itinerary.
It is possible that Paavo valued my keen understanding of American politics. But as I recall, Paavo's intellectual curiosity was wide-ranging and not at all confined to what Washingtonians did by day. He was also curious about what they did by night, and as a good host I did my best to show him what Washington had to offer.
In those days, when Paavo and I used the word "nuclear", we were talking about the profound danger posed by atomic weapons. At the time, I was much involved in , and he was deeply interested in , the efforts then under way to curb that danger through U.S.-Soviet arms control.
Today, in using the same word, each of us is far more likely to be talking not about a global danger but about a global opportunity , indeed, a global responsibility , to use the wonders of atomic science to produce the much-needed benefit of clean energy on a large scale.
I developed this perspective during my seven years in Vienna, representing the Clinton Administration as American ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency and other UN agencies there. Paavo arrived at the same conclusion as the leader of an important European nation , a country much admired for its strength of character and for its intelligent use of limited resources to fulfil national aspirations and responsibilities.
Finland's economy is a great success story. But in achieving that success, the Finnish people have recognised, and begun to embrace, a stark principle that must now govern our entire planet:
To be successful, economic development must not only meet human need. It must do so while protecting and preserving our earthly environment. To be successful, economic development must be sustainable.
To ignore this principle is to invite disaster, not in some long-distant future but in the lifetimes of people now living. The very nature of the world we leave to our children and their children will be determined in the years just ahead by our success , or failure , in applying the principle of sustainability.
Shifting to sustainable economies requires changes in technology and in patterns of human behaviour. But no aspect of achieving sustainability is more fundamental than producing clean energy on a vast and unprecedented scale for a growing world population.
Under no realistic scenario can that challenge be met without a central role for nuclear energy, and an enormous worldwide growth in the industry that provides it.
Although the wonders of nuclear energy are not yet fully appreciated by the general public, the potential for what nuclear technology can offer our 21 st century world is almost unlimited.
Indeed, without a great stretch of the imagination, it is already possible to envisage a future in which nuclear power is providing both clean electricity and hydrogen fuel to produce a worldwide clean-energy revolution.
Beyond that, it quite easy to imagine 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 years past, the nuclear industry has defended itself in many countries 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 global clean-energy future. We represent a technology whose ultimate message is that pollution is not a necessary fact of life.
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 for this crucially important technology.
Regarding the first barrier , the mixture of myths and fears that continue to cloud public discussion , the clouds are starting to dissolve.
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.
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 can 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.
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.
These challenges are embodied in a few harsh and deeply unsettling facts that are now beginning, just 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.
At the World Nuclear Association, our goal is to prepare for , and to hasten the arrival of , a future in which nuclear energy plays a sharply expanding global role.
To help explain the relationship among the different global nuclear organisations, I find it useful to describe a "division of labour" involving a "triad" of responsibilities:
The World Nuclear Association's essential goal is to build and support a global nuclear community of enterprises, large and small, encompassing all countries where nuclear power (or fuel) is being produced , and extending even into countries where nuclear power production is still in the planning stage.
In the past year, WNA membership has grown by 50% and our geographical scope has broadened from 16 to nearly 30 countries. Our membership now represents over 90% of the non-generation side of the nuclear industry worldwide and about 60% of global nuclear generation , figures that are growing almost by the day.
Our goal in the days ahead is to achieve a membership that represents the entire global industry in all dimensions of the nuclear fuel cycle, including generation.
Beyond fostering a global nuclear community among our members, the WNA works on their common behalf by promoting public understanding of nuclear power. Just last week the EU's Energy Commissioner, Loyola de Palacio, summoned the nuclear industry to be far more assertive in making its case, and our goal is to help meet that challenge.
It has become clear that unless the industry acts with self-assertion, we run the risk that global public policy will incorporate the dogmas of those so-called environmentalists whose views are shaped by ideology and myth rather than by science and fact. To defend the industry from such risk by championing improved understanding of nuclear power is both an act of enlightened self-interest and a public responsibility.
Much of the work of public education must, of course, be done nationally , by schools, governments, companies and national associations. Our aim is to support and supplement such efforts , by providing information and advocacy at the trans -national level.
In advocacy, we have two main targets:
Historically, these somewhat arbitrary ratings have taken it as a blind assumption that nuclear is unethical and have thus stigmatised our industry on the basis of nothing more than ignorance and mythology.
The UN negotiations on climate and development are of particular relevance to nuclear power. Here 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 coordinating industry action vis-à-vis the Kyoto negotiations and the forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development.
Our principal adversaries 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 the WNA works to advance these messages, we place particular emphasis on our website.
We are glad to be told that it constitutes the most comprehensive and accessible source of information on the entire global nuclear industry.
The WNA website now receives , from all around the world , over 100,000 hits per month, heavily concentrated on a wide variety of information briefs that we constantly expand and update.
Our website also has a second homepage, for those who like multimedia technology.
As a weapon in the expanding debate, we have introduced on our website a feature we call the AutoEssay.
Entitled Why Tomorrow's World Needs Nuclear Energy, the AutoEssay is a tool of education and persuasion, which presents the case for nuclear energy in a concise but comprehensive form. The presentation places nuclear energy in a global context and answers many common concerns. It takes only about 12 minutes to view and can be watched on a computer screen or projected on a screen.
In the near future, we will make the AutoEssay available on our website in some 22 languages, including Finnish. We see this as a small act of constructive "globalisation" in taking the case for nuclear energy to the public.
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.
I spoke earlier about a global future in which nuclear power becomes the primary energy source not only for electricity production but also for producing both hydrogen fuel and clean water.
Far from being an idealistic fantasy, I believe that vision constitutes the essence of realism. For nuclear power now stands as an indispensable tool if humankind is to master its own destiny.
Already, nuclear power plants are operating in countries representing two-thirds of the world's population; and as we speak here today, nuclear power plants are under construction in countries representing a full half of world population.
Among these nations are China and India, which alone represent 40% of humankind and perhaps an even greater percentage of the economic development that is likely to occur in the 21 st century.
What is needed , in these countries and others , is not a radical shift in direction, but rather a strong acceleration of strategies already in place.
Last week, I travelled to Korea , a nation that has become a world leader in nuclear power , to speak at an event called the International Youth Nuclear Congress. I congratulated those young professionals from all over the world for having been wise and visionary in choosing a career.
Although many in the general public may not yet appreciate it, those young people have entered a remarkable growth industry , one that will offer both professional advancement and the profound satisfaction of contributing to a technology on which the very future of civilisation now depends.
That same sense of professional satisfaction is also available to the older ones of us associated with this industry. I sought this job not simply to serve an industry but to promote a crucial public policy , the safe and widespread use of nuclear power to meet human and environmental needs that will not otherwise be met.
Here in Europe, and around the world, there is much hard work to be done to achieve that policy objective. For the moment, it is a delight to be in a country that is offering the world an excellent example of clear thinking and wise action in a realm of public policy that could not be more important in shaping the world our children will inherit.