Welcome to this two-day Symposium of the World Nuclear Association.

Over the last 25 years, this annual event has gained a prominent role in the world nuclear community, and we proudly carry that tradition into the new millennium. This would have been the 26^th Annual Symposium of the Uranium Institute. Instead, it is the Inaugural Symposium of the new WNA.

Four months ago, our membership decided to change our name and to begin pursuing an ambitious objective. Our aim is to become what our new name implies - a trade organization of truly global membership, energetically supporting all aspects of the nuclear industry worldwide.

It is not just timely - it is urgent - that we do this, because the world has entered an era when nuclear energy is truly an idea whose time has come. The future of nuclear power and the future of this planet’s environment are now very much intertwined.

The functions of this organisation - our twin goals - will remain as before:

• First, we will strive to serve as a global forum and commercial meeting place for those engaged in providing the world’s largest source of safe, affordable and environmentally sound energy.

• Second, we will seek to provide a highly respected information service on nuclear energy, while speaking pro-actively on behalf of the nuclear industry amongst policymakers, opinion leaders, the media and the public.

But while these purposes remain constant, we are also striving to change - by performing these roles with ever-greater effectiveness and on a far wider scale. Earlier this year, we placed confidence in our new Director General to provide bold and creative leadership.

I believe that he and the WNA secretariat have already begun to build a strong foundation for success.

• As a starting point, we have continued our traditional commercially oriented work with vigour. Our working groups remain active in dealing with nuclear fuel, industry economics, nuclear trade issues, transport, decommissioning, and sustainable development and climate change; and we have just issued an impressive new edition of our Market Report.

• Meanwhile, the secretariat has transformed our website in both style and content. In this age when so much information is transmitted through the internet, the WNA website has become extremely comprehensive, up-to-date, and user-friendly. I believe it now stands unparalleled as a convenient and reliable source of information on the nuclear industry worldwide - useful for researchers, journalists, and policymakers everywhere.

• Also on the information front, the weekly WNA News Briefing has been revitalized; and the secretariat is producing two new publications, both providing analysis of industry developments:

• The first is the weekly News Digest.

• The second is the bimonthly WNA Newsletter. The Newsletter collates items from the Digest and provides particularly in-depth analysis of one or two key industry developments. I recommend retaining copies of the Newsletter because, cumulatively, they constitute a kind of contemporary history of our fast changing industry.

• Still further, the secretariat has begun the expansion toward a truly global membership. In recent months, we gained members from four new countries, and the secretariat aims to recruit still more members - in still more new countries - in the months ahead.

• Finally, I believe we have begun to make an impact on the international media front. The Director General would be the first to agree that the work of promoting accurate public understanding of our industry has only just begun. But already the WNA has achieved a public profile, and I am confident that our impact will grow in the months ahead. The DG’s recent interview on the globally televised BBC Hardtalk is one example.

Personally, I am proud that our organisation has taken these confident steps forward. We intend to grow, get stronger, serve our members better, and advance with ever greater force the important message that nuclear power is the large-scale clean energy that mankind needs in the 21^st century.

In that spirit, let me show you a photograph.

This is our world - modern in many areas, but still undeveloped in large areas that are filled with huge and growing populations.

In the decades ahead, there will be many, many more of those lights. New lights - and trillions of kilowatts of electrical power - will be required if the needs of billions of people now alive - and soon to be born - are to be met. That energy must be affordable and it must be clean.

Those of us in this room have a task that relates not just to the future of our industry but, even more importantly, to the well being of our planet. Our task is nothing less than to see that the largest possible percentage of these lights - and the lights yet to appear - are powered by nuclear electricity.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have put together what I believe is a strong agenda for this Symposium and a distinguished group of speakers. We thank you for coming, and we look forward to our two days together. I am now pleased to turn the programme over to our Director General.