John RitchDirector General, World Nuclear AssociationPresident, World Nuclear University
Graduation CeremonyFirst Annual Summer Institute of the World Nuclear University
Las Vegas, USA19 August 2005
Dear colleagues and WNU Fellows:
Six weeks ago, those who had conceived of the WNU Summer Institute began this enterprise with confidence in our purpose. We knew with certainty that our world urgently needs a leadership cadre to advance the global use of nuclear energy in the 21st century. At the same time, we recognised that this was still an experiment that might falter or fail despite its sound rationale.
This evening, as we prepare to close this first Summer Institute, our doubts have been removed. Through contributions from the many experts who came to Idaho Falls to share their knowledge and experience - and, even more important, with the enthusiastic participation of those of you who constitute the first class of WNU Fellows - we have successfully established a new nuclear institution of great potential value to the world.
When we began in Idaho Falls, I greeted the new WNU Fellows by saying that we were proud to have you here and hoped that you were equally proud to be here. Tonight I would simply like to say that I am proud of you - as individuals and as a newly created family of young professionals. You have fulfilled our highest expectations as to how a class of WNU Fellows might respond to the opportunity we sought to provide. I thank you and I applaud you for giving back to the Summer Institute the same level of motivation that we brought to the task of creating it.
I appreciate your work in developing a joint declaration affirming your commitment to building the scientific foundations of nuclear technology and also public understanding to support its valuable use. This was the beginning of what I hope will be a series of joint efforts by this first class of Fellows.
Your declaration states that nuclear energy can make an important contribution to the goal of worldwide clean energy supply. If I wished to amend your declaration, I would say that nuclear must make an enormous contribution if our world is to prevent catastrophic climate change. That certainly is the premise on which we built this new institution.
Our world needs thousands of nuclear reactors, and that need is urgent. You will be interested to know that four days ago, the prime minister of India gave an important speech on that nation's independence day in which we said that India could now contemplate building 40,000 new megawatts of nuclear power - not in the next 50 years but in the next ten years. This would represent a commitment to nuclear power comparable to that which France made in the 1970's.
As you return home to resume your professional lives, I have two simple and related requests:
As we seek to build this new institution, your first-person enthusiasm can be an enormous asset in generating both future participation and financial support. We need motivated participants, and we need to build a donor base of modest contributions from many sources.
It is now my pleasure to introduce our Chancellor. Hans Blix has lived a life of achievement and genuine contribution, and, as with any such life, he has collected a large family of friends and admirers, and a tiny but vocal army of critics.
Hans' critics have sometimes enjoyed dismissing him as nothing more than "an international bureaucrat". Those who know Hans would understand the irony of this criticism. For Hans would not regard that as an insult. What he did during 16 years as head of the IAEA and then during 3 years as head of the UN's Iraq inspectorate was to fulfil the role of an international bureaucrat with such a combination of integrity, values, vision, and leadership that he came, quite rightly, to be widely recognized and esteemed as a world statesman.
In that role, Hans has made an enormous contribution both to the institutions of world governance and to the institutions that provide the indispensable framework for the constructive worldwide use of nuclear energy.
For this reason alone, it is fitting that Hans be the World Nuclear University's Chancellor. But it is even more fitting because of his role in the creation of this global partnership - a role that was indirect but essential.
More than 10 years ago, when a new American ambassador arrived in Vienna to represent the USA at the IAEA and other UN agencies, Hans took the American gently under his wing. The American was already committed to nuclear arms control. But Hans expanded his horizons to understand that non-proliferation was not enough. Hans was a quiet but efficient teacher and - in many encounters over several years - he returned with calm persistence to a fundamental theme: that the emerging crisis of global warming would require an enormous worldwide expansion of nuclear energy.
By the time Hans was done, he had created a full-fledged apostle, and I trace my subsequent role in the creation of the World Nuclear Association and the World Nuclear University to messages I first heard from Hans.
Hans Blix thus offers you, as WNU Fellows, a role model in two respects:
We hope that your participation in the Summer Institute will have inspired you to emulate our Chancellor in both respects - as public servant and as public educator.
Hans Blix has demonstrated that one person's efforts can ripple into far-reaching effects, and we hope that you, as the first class of WNU Fellows, will go forth, individually and collectively, to create new ripples of your own.
I am proud to introduce my friend and a man from whom ripples continue to emanate, Hans Blix.