Remarks by John Ritch Director General, World Nuclear Association
PIME Conference Prague 4 February 2002
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am pleased to be here today in the company of two women of great value to the World Nuclear Association and the larger global nuclear community.
Agneta Rising, the WNA's current chairman, will speak about an opportunity not yet fully appreciated. Her topic is the high and comprehensive standards that govern the global nuclear industry and the pride we should take in letting the world know it.
In this I fully concur. Over the span of several decades, a strong transnational framework of law and cooperation has been erected to guide all aspects of the global nuclear industry. Our purpose in establishing a WNA Charter of Ethics was:
With me in this half hour is Emma Cornish, who manages environmental affairs in our small but busy WNA secretariat in London. Emma is just back from New York, where she attended the first week of the preparatory meetings for the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
The Johannesburg Summit will offer an enormous opportunity , both for the nuclear industry and for its ideological enemies. As this year unfolds, and as we prepare also for another round of the Kyoto process, we can have no higher purpose than to wage an effective campaign of worldwide truth telling directed at journalists, diplomats, national policymakers and international institutions.
In a few minutes, Emma will give us some early observations concerning the ideological and institutional context in which we will be operating.
Our elemental goal must be to ensure that nuclear is not stigmatised as a technology antithetical to sustainable development. Our larger goal must be to achieve an ever-widening recognition that nuclear energy is not just compatible with sustainable development but indispensable to any realistic strategy for achieving it.
One year ago, when I attended PIME as the newly appointed head of the Uranium Institute, the possibility of building a true World Nuclear Association was just a gleam in my eye. I spoke then with some optimism about the prospects for nuclear energy and my belief that the debate over its future was winnable , if only because the world's needs are too great, and the case for nuclear too strong, to permit any other outcome in the long-term. A year later, and with the World Nuclear Association now up and running, my optimism remains intact.
In building on the foundation of our predecessor organization, our goal in London has been to bring new intensity to traditional missions and thereby to make a stronger contribution to the global industry. Since we began this revitalization some nine months ago:
Prominent in this effort is our Strategy Group on Sustainable Development, which we recently established at the direction of a large number of industry CEO's , leaders who had viewed, with growing concern, the progress of anti-nuclear greens in using the world climate change negotiations to convert mythology into international law.
In historical perspective, what we were witnessing was a monumental perversity, in which a relatively small number of ideologues had effectively taken control of a gravely important multilateral process and were attempting to exclude the one technology , nuclear power , that belongs at the centre of any rational global strategy for climate protection and sustainable development.
The WNA Strategy Group was created as an industry-wide partnership to help blunt that negative momentum, and slowly but surely to establish positive momentum of our own.
We have no illusion that such goals can be achieved simply through adroit presentations on the margins of international negotiations, or by whispering advice in the ears of national delegates. Quite the contrary: while such work has tactical value, and we will perform it energetically, it can at most be only supportive of work performed at the centres of national power.
The essential work of explaining and upholding this industry's invaluable role must be done nationally , primarily in capitals , in the crucial stages where official delegations are formed and where national negotiating positions are established. Our industry has learned from painful experience that by the time formal multilateral negotiations commence, much of the game is already over.
While recognising the primacy of work done within national borders, the Strategy Group is providing a coordinating function:
We hope you will think of us as a transnational clearinghouse for creative thoughts, as a practical forum where the concept of collegiality takes precedence over rivalries big and small, and as a mechanism for identifying and seizing opportunities to bring the industry's message directly to bear in the multilateral arena.
Agneta, Emma and I are "all ears" in welcoming your suggestions on strategy, tactics, messages and modalities , in short, on what to say and how and where to say it. Throughout this conference, we will hope to hear your thoughts as to how best to use this coordinating function to the industry's best advantage.
One particular area where we invite your suggestions is in the shaping of large "theme messages" that bear repetition on a global front.
One main message is that nuclear energy , despite all the controversy emanating from green agitations in Western Europe and other developed countries , has in fact already been embraced by much of the real world. Nuclear power plants are operational today in countries with 2/3 of global population, and new nuclear power plants are under construction in countries with a full half of world population.
To help make this point powerfully, indeed irrefutably, the Strategy Group is undertaking to collaborate with key leaders from India and China in order to offer them the best possible platform from which to articulate, with the strong weight of national authority, that much of the developing world has already identified and embraced nuclear energy as an essential tool of sustainable development.
Indeed, the question in those countries is not whether they will have nuclear power but whether they can afford to implement their nuclear energy plans on a scale sufficient to avert catastrophic environmental impact. The corresponding question for the developed world is whether it can afford to sit idly by as if no wider interests were at stake as huge developing nations grapple with energy issues that in fact hold profound implications for the entire biosphere.
While our Strategy Group recognizes that nationally produced materials must carry the main the load in promoting understanding of nuclear energy, we are supplementing those efforts by preparing basic materials that make the case for nuclear in broad global terms and in multiple languages. These basic products will be both electronic and printed.
At this point, we want to show you one electronic product we call the AutoEssay. It is already available on the WNA website, and is now being prepared for translation into about 20 languages. This spring we will make it widely available on a multilingual mini-CD.
In viewing it, please remember that the primary audience will be PC-users. But it can also be used for presentations to small audiences. The mini-CD will contain the presentation in multimedia format, and also in Power Point, so that it will be readily adaptable to many uses in many countries.
Our goal here was to make the case for nuclear in a way that is comprehensive yet succinct, and fact-filled while persuasive. Let us know if we have succeeded.