Turning a Corner in History:

Global Cooperation on Nuclear Power in an Era of Sustainable Development

Remarks by John Ritch
Director General, World Nuclear Association

International Centre for Environmental Studies of Minatom
Moscow, 28 May 2002

Ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure to be with you today to discuss a problem and an opportunity, both on a world scale:

• The problem is the challenge of global sustainable development , a challenge centred on the need to achieve a massive worldwide shift to clean-energy technologies.
• The opportunity lies in the possibility that the major adversaries of the Cold War era could now work together, combining their intellectual and industrial resources in a mutually rewarding effort to meet this monumental challenge.

When the Cold War ended, an American commentator called it "the end of history". His thought was that the historic question of how society should be organized had finally been resolved in favour of free-market democracy. This proposition can be debated. But one thing is certain: the end of the Cold War did not mark the end of history.

What ended was a chapter of history in which a great geopolitical struggle dominated the passions and priorities of much of the world, absorbing resources in vast quantity and shaping all political thought and action for nearly 50 years. During that period, even broad global issues of human need and economic development were viewed through a Cold War prism.

A principal blessing of the Cold War's end 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 facts that are now beginning, just beginning , to be recognized as the dominant realities of geopolitics in the 21 st century. These are realities from which no country can escape:

• First, in the next 50 years, global population will grow from 6 billion to 9 billion. In a world where human misery is already vast and widespread, unmet human needs could multiply drastically. Soon, as much as half of world population may be without sanitation and safe water.
• Second, between now and 2050, as countries seek to meet the needs of this exploding population, global energy consumption will double , and possibly triple. In just this narrow period, humankind will consume more energy than the total used in all previous history.
• Third, the global rate of CO 2 emissions , already 25 billion tonnes a year, or 800 tonnes a second , is still growing. The projected greenhouse gas accumulation will, within the 21 st century, rise to more than double the pre-industrial level.
• Fourth, to stabilise greenhouse gases, even at that higher level, requires that global emissions be cut by 50%. Developing countries will inevitably emit more greenhouse gases. Thus, any hope of averting catastrophic climate change depends on industrialised countries cutting emissions by 75%.

These facts cannot be ignored, even by those who might wish to build walls of national isolationism , because decisions taken by nations individually will have a collective impact, of major proportions, on our shared global environment.

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.

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.

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 a third essential , by making clean water through desalination.

If one imagines a future 50 years from now in which energy demand has tripled, and in which nuclear power is meeting world needs for electricity, hydrogen and clean water, it requires only the back of an envelope to calculate that we would need to build one 1,000-MW nuclear reactor each day for the next 50 years to meet that need.

If this figure seems large, it is only because our imaginations have not yet caught up with the scale of the problem we face. Although it may be unlikely that we will achieve a fully clean, nuclear-powered economy in the next 50 years, this rough calculation helps to demonstrate the magnitude of the clean-energy challenge that confronts us.

Environmental imperatives underscore the immense value of nuclear energy. But a great expansion of nuclear power can also be predicted simply by comparing the future of global energy supply and demand, leaving clean-energy considerations aside.

In 2050, serious experts project that fossil fuel supplies will increase, at most, by 50% , from 8 Gtoe (giga-tonnes of oil-equivalent) to 12.5 Gtoe , while renewables double to a level of 1.5 Gtoe. Meanwhile, global energy demand will double or triple. Consider each possibility:

• If world energy consumption doubles from 9 Gtoe to 18 Gtoe, that leaves nuclear power to provide over 20% of all world energy, as compared to today's 6%, which is more than a tripling of its current share.
• If world energy consumption triples to 27 Gtoe, that leaves nuclear to provide about one-half of world energy (not just electricity), which is eight times its share today.

The first hypothesis , a doubling of world energy demand , requires a world with about 3,000 1-GW reactors. The second hypothesis , a tripling of world energy demand , requires about 10,000 1-GW reactors, which would mean building one reactor every two days for the next 50 years.

These numbers, I emphasize, are based on the unlikely assumption that our economies operate in the future with no concern for environmental consequences. Assuming that world governments eventually begin to penalize carbon emissions , through taxes or emissions trading , the prospects for nuclear expansion become even stronger.

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 explain the relationship among the different global nuclear organisations, it may be useful to think in terms of a "division of labour" involving a "triad" of responsibilities:

• The IAEA is the inter-governmental body whose standards and safeguards define the ground-rules on which world nuclear commerce depends.
• Among nuclear utilities, WANO has a built a private-sector network of technical exchange and peer review that has become indispensable to the global industry by ensuring best practices in operational safety in nuclear generation.
• Finally, the WNA, serving as the global organisation of the entire nuclear industry , is acting to unify the industry for purposes of commerce and cooperation, while working to represent the industry through public and policy advocacy at the trans-national level.

Among the members of this triad, there is a strong will to cooperate. Neither the IAEA nor WANO engages in commerce or public advocacy, and each has welcomed the World Nuclear Association as a needed partner.

Notable former leaders of the IAEA and WANO , Hans Blix and Zack Pate , have agreed to serve as the two co-chairmen of the WNA Board of Advisers.

The World Nuclear Association's 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.

Russia's nuclear community has recognized and embraced the aims of the World Nuclear Association. Russia was already an active participant in the IAEA and WANO. But the WNA offers the additional opportunity , of immense potential value to Russia , to interact commercially with an expanding global nuclear community and to work within this community to inform our publics about the important role of nuclear power in a global clean-energy future.

Others have joined Russia in the process of forming a global nuclear community. 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. One missing piece in the WNA mosaic is the participation of Rosenergoatom, whose participation I strongly encourage.

The WNA serves its global membership through a secretariat based in London, and we are also beginning to establish small offices regionally. The creation of a Moscow office for the WNA is now an option well worth discussing.

Throughout the year, our corporate members collaborate through working groups on industry economics, trade, waste management, transport, decommissioning and nuclear fuel production. In September the annual World Nuclear Association Symposium in London is a major industry event.

Beyond fostering a global nuclear community among our members, the WNA works on their common behalf by promoting public understanding of nuclear power.

Many companies, associations and societies also do such work , at the national level. The WNA's aim is to support such efforts , and to supplement them , by providing information and advocacy at the trans -national level.

In advocacy, we have two main targets:

• One is the global media, where we try to identity and educate key journalists, editors, and editorial boards. The WNA is now regularly quoted in the world press and, equally important, we are frequently consulted by journalists, enabling us to remove errors from media coverage before they appear in print or on the air.
• Our second main advocacy target is the realm of multilateral institutions, where anti-nuclear views are often well entrenched. Here we are interested in helping to educate the major UN development and environmental agencies, the World and regional development banks, multinational political bodies like the European and NATO Parliaments (in which Russian parliamentarians are now participating), and those involved in the UN negotiations on climate change and sustainable development. All of these are forums where anti-nuclear ideology has flourished in the past but must now be forced to defend itself against the facts.

The UN negotiations on climate and development are of particular relevance to nuclear power. Here the WNA has responded to the request from a large group of industry CEO's by coordinating industry action vis-à-vis the Kyoto negotiations and the forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development.

Our principal adversaries are anti-nuclear activists 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 believe it has become 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 4,000 hits per day, heavily concentrated on a wide variety of information briefs that we constantly expand and update.

As an educational tool in the expanding debate, we have introduced on our website a feature we call the AutoEssay, which presents the case for nuclear energy in just 12 minutes. It can be viewed on a computer or projected on a larger screen. This week, we have made the AutoEssay available on our website in some 22 languages, including Russian.

As a next step, we will soon distribute the AutoEssay on CD's , again in more than 20 languages, including Russian. We anticipate producing these CD's in large quantity as an aid to our nuclear partners around the world.

Today we have an historic opportunity to cooperate. But our opportunity is, in fact, something more. Our effective cooperation, through a worldwide community of nuclear professionals, has become nothing less than indispensable if we are to avert a global catastrophe , of the environment and of worldwide human suffering , on a scale we are just beginning to contemplate.

Those of us here today, and in the broader nuclear community we wish to build, are participants in a strange and potentially beautiful twist of history. For a half century , as adversaries , our development of nuclear technology produced weapons that terrorized the world with the threat of global destruction. As a new century unfolds, our cooperative efforts , as partners , to promote the peaceful use of nuclear science may now be indispensable if we are to preserve the Biosphere itself.

Our aim at the World Nuclear Association is to speed the process as history turns this corner.