Remarks by John RitchDirector General, World Nuclear Association
International Conference on Issues and Trends in Radioactive Waste Management
IAEA, Vienna9 December 2002
For the half century of Cold War that ended just a dozen years ago, geo-strategic conflict was the consuming focus of world politics. Today, having emerged from that dangerous era, the world's nations have begun to refocus. Rising ever higher on our agenda are critical global problems long deferred, potentially even more threatening and now too urgent to ignore.
These problems do not arise from a clash of armed nations or rival ideologies, but rather from the vigour of peaceful human activity and from an explosive rise in human numbers.
Today, and for the foreseeable future, the fundamental question facing humanity is whether we can reconcile the imperative of fulfilling human needs and aspirations with the imperative of preserving the very environment that enabled civilisation to evolve.
Dominant in today's headlines is the challenge of preventing the use weapons of mass destruction for aggression or terror. But no less urgent is the need to act now to prevent the larger, more pervasive dangers that will eventually overwhelm us if we fail to deal with the sweeping challenge of achieving global sustainable development.
It is far from alarmist to warn that the air we breathe and the climate on which we depend could each become, during the century ahead, instruments of mass destruction that far exceed the lethality of manmade weapons.
Nor is it alarmist to state what is no more than a fact: that world population , which will increase from 6 to 9 billion in the next 50 years , is expanding far more rapidly than our ability to meet basic human needs. In the coming half century, global energy demand will double, and humankind will consume more energy than the total in used in all previous history. In just the next 20 years, we will be hard-pressed to avoid a global catastrophe arising from the severe shortage of clean water.
These trends are dire and make inevitable a future of radical change. Either we will achieve radical transformation in the global economy , or we will experience a radical surge in human suffering and a radical alteration in the global environment.
No aspect of sustainable development is more elemental than the need to accomplish a massive worldwide shift to clean energy technologies , to be used both by economies that are already industrialised and also to meet an expanding global demand.
It is an irony of our age , and it is fast becoming a tragic irony , that so many citizens and organisations most concerned about the clean energy problem are fixated on myths, dogmas and sheer fantasies regarding the solution.
In the realm of hard reality, projections by the International Energy Agency (in the public sector) and the World Energy Council (in the private sector) point unambiguously to the same conclusion , that our need for clean energy on a colossal scale cannot conceivably be met without a sharply increased use of nuclear power.
Those who persist in opposing nuclear power in the name of environmental preservation will surely earn the scorn of history and of future generations. Fortunately, the world is coming to recognise the profound reality that sustainability requires nuclear energy.
The world's environmentalists, who have performed many valuable services, can now provide their fellow citizens no greater service than to discard the fiction that conservation, solar panels and windmills can alone meet human needs. The path of sound environmentalism today is to embrace , and fight for , a future in which nuclear power and "new renewables" function as clean-energy partners in a transformed global economy.
Foundations for a "Nuclear Century"
In the decades ahead, the world will come to recognize its debt to the scientists and diplomats of the last half century who worked to build nuclear power into a vibrant and mature technology supported by an international structure to ensure its peaceful uses.
This combined effort has paved the way for a "nuclear century" in which the power of the atom , rather than posing a threat to human existence , will be indispensable to human welfare:
The irony that some environmentalists oppose nuclear energy is compounded when they oppose it on the grounds that waste is the insoluble problem of nuclear power. In truth, waste is the greatest comparative asset of nuclear power.
As compared to the 25 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide now spewing into the biosphere each year from the use of fossil fuel, nuclear power creates a tiny volume of waste that can be safely managed , and disposed of , without damage to people or the environment.
It is precisely this asset , the ability to extract enormous energy from the atom with a minimum of waste , that constitutes Nature's great blessing to humanity as we seek to meet expanding human needs in a biosphere that is both resilient and fragile.
In the years just ahead, the advantages of nuclear power will be multiplied by another atomic marvel: the ability to unite hydrogen and oxygen to make electricity. Hydrogen offers a means, for the first time in history, of storing enormous quantities of electricity , for use on demand in cleanly powered transportation and in the full range of traditional electricity uses for home and industry.
Hydrogen's environmental value requires, however, that it be made cleanly , using the clean primary energy that only nuclear power can provide on a vast scale.
Hydrogen provides the bridge by which nuclear power can expand its clean-energy contribution from the narrow realm of providing base-load electricity into the entire spectrum of energy use.
With this bridge, it is now possible for the first time to envisage a thriving, large-scale, emissions-free industrial economy, with nuclear power and renewables providing clean primary energy for direct electricity and for electricity storage via hydrogen.
The father of the hydrogen-fuel cell, Geoff Ballard, describes this as an economy operating on "hydricity".
Hydricity is an exciting prospect not only because it offers technological hope, but also because it can inspire action in realm of climate change diplomacy. The Kyoto protocol, even with its meagre cuts and incomplete participation, has introduced the valuable concept of emissions trading. Our need now is for a comprehensive treaty regime in which all the nations of the world , developed and developing , undertake a binding commitment to use emissions trading as the economic incentive for a long-term evolution to a global clean energy economy.
It is possible to envisage a global trading system in which all nations could find advantage. Our failure thus far traces to the lack of a vision as to how a collective commitment to deep emissions cuts might realistically be fulfilled. The emergence of a feasible and widely understood clean-energy vision could break this logjam, stimulating nations to undertake the commitments that will accelerate the vision's fulfilment.
Because hydricity , powered by nuclear energy and renewables , promises to provide that vision, it is extremely important that we continue our progress in developing regimes governing nuclear energy that are conducive to building ever stronger public support. In no aspect of nuclear power is this progress more important than in the management of waste.
Our progress to date on waste disposal has been both scientific and political. In each area , science and pubic policy , it is pertinent today to ask two questions: First, where do we stand, Second, what further progress is feasible and how should we seek to achieve it?
Progress and Prospects in the Scientific Realm
As to where we stand on the scientific front, it is fair to say that our work is , in principle , complete, insofar as the scientific community has achieved consensus that a well-chosen, well-engineered geological repository is a responsible and feasible means of achieving safe long-term storage and disposal.
This consensus was reflected in a 1999 report of the NEA's Radioactive Waste Management Committee, which concluded as follows: "Although refinements are still being made, deep geologic disposal is effectively a technology that is mature enough for deployment".
For its part, the ICRP has affirmed repeatedly that the radiological impact from the disposal of radwaste, using now accepted techniques, will be negligible.
To assert this is not to dismiss the possibility and desirability of scientific progress in reducing the quantity of waste generated by a given amount of nuclear power or in shortening the time required for decay.
Last month, while in America, I visited the Argonne National Laboratory, which will soon become the newest member of the World Nuclear Association. Researchers there are now participating with other U.S. laboratories in DOE's new Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative, which was launched in October with a heavy focus on achieving progress in the partitioning and transmutation of waste into short-lived or non-radioactive material. A specific objective is to obviate the need for a second U.S. high-level waste repository, in addition to Yucca Mountain.
The U.S. Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative and U.S. leadership of a multilateral partnership pursuing development of Generation IV advanced nuclear reactor designs are much to be welcomed , both for the scientific progress they will engender and equally because they demonstrate a revitalised American commitment to nuclear power that will have a valuable ripple effect around the world.
Our goal should be to harmonize these American-led efforts , and parallel research underway in Russia, in Japan, in France, in the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, in the IAEA's INPRO programme, and elsewhere , to the maximum degree possible. It is a fundamental goal of the World Nuclear Association, as it is of the IAEA, to promote transnational cooperation within the world nuclear community.
As we pursue this collective research, however, we must take great care to place it in accurate context. We must not allow the prospect of further progress in the fuel cycle or in the science of nuclear waste to become an obstacle to our proceeding with deliberate speed to implement , on the broadest possible front , the concept of geological storage and disposal.
Even with revolutionary advance in reactors and the nuclear fuel cycle, there will still be waste requiring geologic disposal.
As the NEA's Radioactive Waste Management Committee concluded in 1999, partitioning and transmutation is not an alternative to disposal: "At best it reduces the volume, or changes the isotope distribution, of wastes requiring disposal."
The Committee warned also against regarding "extended or indefinite surface storage as a real alternative to disposal". Indeed, I would sharpen this point by noting that the most vocal advocates of indefinite surface storage of waste are the truly dedicated opponents of nuclear energy, who are keenly concerned to keep the waste issue alive , and indefinitely unresolved.
In short, new and ongoing research efforts on waste minimisation and waste disposal can be a great asset as we continue to perfect nuclear technology for the new millennium. But these efforts can pose a liability if and as we allow research to be misconstrued as implying a need to wait.
Research now should be seen as a process of optimising technologies , for power production and waste disposal , that are already mature and eminently sound.
Progress and Prospects in Public Policy
Turning now to the public policy front, where do we stand and where do we go from here?
Nearly three years ago, representing my country at the Cordoba conference, I analogised the policy aspects of waste management to a Gordian knot. Unlike the Alexander of antiquity, who achieved greatness by slicing through a hopelessly tangled knot, our path forward requires patience and step-by-step success.
Today we can take encouragement that our progress in untying the knot of long-term waste management has, in recent years, been considerable.
On the national policy front, we have seen hard fought and well earned victories for reason in both Finland and the United States. Symbolically, these successes are synergistic because they combine Scandinavian moral authority with American technological leadership. Parallel political progress is under way in Sweden, France, Japan, Russia and, to various degrees, elsewhere.
Meanwhile, on the international front, we have achieved equally historic progress in three key areas: standards, obligations, and peer review to demonstrate compliance. This progress constitutes a giant step toward a fully functioning, internationally sanctioned system.
Through the IAEA, the international community has built a sophisticated, nearly complete corpus of global safety standards. These are embodied in a series of Agency publications covering all aspects of safe operation and various aspects of waste management.
Heretofore, one key element of the mosaic was missing. But just last week technical officers from national regulators met to consider and finalise the last draft of the IAEA's "Safety Standards for Geological Repositories".
According to current plans, publication after approval by the IAEA Board is scheduled for 2004. In the meantime, an extensive effort will be undertaken to achieve maximum institutional and national "buy-in".
When achieved, this success will constitute an historic landmark, for it will expand the coverage of internationally agreed safety standards to a full 100% of the nuclear fuel cycle.
Establishment of the Joint Convention also represents an historic step, for it raises the commitment to safe disposal according to global standards from a catechism to an international, legally binding obligation.
A remaining task is to bring in three major players , the U.S., Russia and Japan , which are not yet in the regime.
Two such reviews have occurred, both in connection with Yucca Mountain. The first concerned only an evaluation of the biospheric modelling programme. The second was an all-encompassing review of the entire Yucca Mountain project.
This step is historic because it has demonstrated, in a case holding importance for the future of the entire global industry, the valuable domestic impact of validated compliance with international standards.
In the Bush Administration's effort to assemble a congressional majority to support Yucca Mountain, the fact that the project had passed the test of an objective international evaluation proved to be an immense asset.
Traditionally, governments and industry have been instinctively averse to the intrusion of appraisal by external bodies. But this precedent , of outside peer review serving as a crucial asset in national decisions , offers a lesson for all nations, and not only on matters of geologic disposal.
This lesson is now taking hold. Recently, for example, the UK chose to obtain an IAEA peer review on transport. Following suit, France has now requested the same evaluation for the same reason: the persuasive effect of a neutral evaluator applying a globally approved standard.
The topic of international standards for geological disposal inevitably points us toward the question of international repositories. It is widely recognized that for some countries, especially small ones, this concept will eventually hold great value because of challenging geological conditions, limited siting options, or cost.
Earlier this year, a small group of organisations from five European countries launched a new association , the Association for Regional and International Underground Storage (ARIUS) , to support the concept of shared facilities for storage and disposal. The World Nuclear Association intends to work with ARIUS and its members to explore this concept.
In so doing, however, ARIUS and we share a keen awareness of the sensitivities attendant to this subject. It is absolutely imperative that any consideration of the eventual use of shared facilities not impede progress in those countries that are in the process of demonstrating leadership by acting to fulfil their responsibilities through national sites.
Indeed, it is fundamental to the future of geological disposal that we achieve a track record of successful national disposal. Such progress should deserve to dispel the phobias and taboos that currently surround this topic, so that nations can eventually make decisions , whether for national or shared sites , based on rational calculation rather on fear and procrastination.
A Partnership for Nuclear Progress
In closing, let me express, on behalf of the nuclear industry, gratitude for the contribution of this Agency in pushing forward toward the achievement of a worldwide system of nuclear waste disposal based on high, legally binding standards overseen by a process of peer review.
Two years after creating the World Nuclear Association on the foundations of the previous Uranium Institute, we are well advanced in the building of a truly global organisation of the companies and organisations that conduct the actual business of operating the nuclear fuel cycle, and generating nuclear electricity, worldwide.
In building this professional community, our aim is to work, without inhibition, to win support for nuclear power among citizens and policymakers worldwide.
In so doing, we recognize that the functioning of our industry , and the task of winning public support , depend crucially on the functions provided by this great Agency.
The WNA's Charter of Ethics dedicates us to full support of the Agency and of WANO.
Our goal is to work in close cooperation with both WANO and IAEA , in a partnership that enables nuclear technology to make the crucial worldwide contribution that will be so desperately needed by all of humankind in the coming century.