For decades the world was dominated by the Cold War. The armaments race resulted in the US and the Soviet Union together having some 65 000 nuclear warheads. Questions like development, environment were regarded as “soft issues” - in contrast to the hard strategic issues.

Today we live in a radically transformed world. The enormous armories are beginning to shrink. Our think tanks are no longer concentrating on how best to maintain the prospect of a mutually assured destruction, no longer contemplating the risk that nuclear weapons might put an end to human civilization. This certainly is a liberation. They can now focus on how to develop our economic, social, political and cultural systems. How to combat unemployment and inflation, how to clean up our soiled environment, how to restrain population growth and how to make nearly two hundred sovereign States co-operate more effectively and live more safely together.

The nuclear scientists, engineers and administrators are not concerned with all these issues, but they have an important role to play in the tremendous work that lies ahead to make our world safer and more liveable.

The first and most obvious task is to devise ways in which the nuclear weapons can safely be reduced in number and eventually eliminated. Very significant progress has already been registered in this regard, above all through the START-2 agreement which stipulates a reduction of US and Russian warheads to 3000 each by the year 2005. While we are hoping for a START-3 to take this number further down, the nuclear community should accelerate its study and discussion of the best way to take care of the large volumes of plutonium and highly enriched uranium that are being recovered through the dismantlement of the warheads. Although this is undoubtedly a complex question, the current debate sometimes seems to reflect a greater concern about the surplus fissile material than there was about the nuclear weapons from which it is being recovered. This is misguided. Dismantling of weapons raises problems, but the existence of nuclear weapons certainly raises greater problems.

Before the excess nuclear material is peacefully used or disposed of, the storage and management of it must be such that the world is guaranteed that it does not go back into new and possibly more modern nuclear weapons. I welcome President Yeltsin's and President Clinton's agreement in this regard and the declaration of President Clinton that the United States will place nuclear material recovered from weapons under the safeguards of the IAEA. We expect considerable quantities of such material to be placed permanently under safeguards by the United States already this year. The IAEA could undoubtedly perform the same safeguards service for nuclear material recovered from weapons in Russia, if this were requested.

In a situation where tens of thousands of nuclear warheads are waiting to be dismantled, a prohibition of the production of further nuclear material for weapons seems natural. It would not, of course, affect the enrichment of uranium or reprocessing of plutonium for fuel fabrication. However, if a cut-off of production of fissionable material for weapons were made universal, it would also put a cap on any further production of fissionable material for weapons in the so-called threshold States, i.e. in India, Pakistan and Israel. Verification of a cut-off would be indispensable in order to create confidence that nuclear material is no longer produced for weapons. Such verification would require an extensive effort as at least the world’s enrichment and reprocessing plants would have to be placed under safeguards and there would need to be assurance that there were no secret production facilities.

Another measure that the world nuclear community must now help to bring about is a ban on all nuclear testing. It is now the subject of serious negotiation in Geneva where the seismic and other methods of verification are being discussed intensely. The conclusion and universal acceptance of a complete test ban would give a powerful signal that the era of nuclear weapons development is over. It would also give a powerful boost to the Non-Proliferation Treaty by eliminating one inequality between its non-nuclear weapons States parties which cannot produce and test a nuclear device, and its nuclear-weapon States parties, which at present can do so.

Next year the Non-Proliferation Treaty will be up for prolongation. After the revelations in Iraq of a secret nuclear programme and the resistance by the DPRK to effective verification, there has been much concern about the possibility of clandestine nuclear programmes. The cases of Iraq and the DPRK certainly point to the need for strengthening and development of the international verification system to minimize the risk of undiscovered secret programmes. Such work is underway in the IAEA.

I must also report to you that there is some anxiety in the international community about risks of proliferation stemming from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. While it is expected that Kazakstan, Belarus and Ukraine will all confirm their renunciation of nuclear weapons and finalize safeguards verification arrangements with the IAEA, there is currently concern about the effective control of nuclear material. There have been many cases of smuggling of such material. In most cases, the quantities have been insignificant and often the material has proved to be a health hazard rather than a real proliferation risk. What raises concern, however, is that the control in the nuclear sector is not sufficiently tight to make it impossible for criminal elements to steal nuclear material. I should like to appeal to the nuclear communities represented here to join in a vigilance against these dangerous activities.

I don’t want to leave the subject of non-proliferation without mentioning also the important positive developments - which in my view dominate. Argentina and Brazil have both opened the whole of their nuclear programmes to each other and to IAEA inspection. If - as we have reason to hope - Cuba joins the Tlatelolco Treaty, the whole of Latin America could become a nuclear weapon-free zone. In Africa, South Africa has become the first State in the world to roll back from a nuclear weapons capability and to request IAEA verification of the termination of its weapons programme. If, as was recently declared, Algeria adheres to the NPT, the path would be open for Africa to become a second nuclear weapon-free continent. The Middle East and the Indian subcontinent are the areas where special arrangements still need to be worked out.

Let me conclude my brief comments on the nuclear arms control and disarmament agenda by asking whether we can hope to move toward a world free of nuclear weapons? Today these weapons have come to be seen as increasingly obsolescent and irrelevant to the political and security concerns of the twenty-first century. However, it will still be many years before the five declared nuclear-weapon States fully discard their arsenals. It will require an international security system that is far more developed than the rudimentary system which we still have in the United Nations fifty years after its creation. Still, we are moving in a hopeful direction.

My message to you is that the community of nuclear scientists, engineers and administrators must help in the extensive efforts that are needed to rid the world of the monsters that proliferated during the long years of the Cold War. This community has an even more obvious task to help place nuclear energy at the positive service of humanity - in medicine, in agriculture and in industry and power generation.

Exactly forty years ago, on 27 June 1954, the world’s first nuclear power reactor began to operate here at Obninsk in Russia. We pay our respects to this momentous event. Today, nuclear power generates about as much as hydropower does. This is a rapid expansion of a source of energy. Yet we know that the expansion could have been even larger and that at present nuclear power is actually facing stagnation in most of the Western industrial countries, and is continuing its fast expansion only in the booming Far East.

In my view a general revival of nuclear power is highly desirable for several reasons. A number of Western industrialized States at present have a comfortable electricity balance, but all indications are that over time much more energy, especially electricity, will be needed - particularly in developing countries. It is true that significant energy savings will be achieved through efficiency gains and possible changes in lifestyle. This is already assumed in most energy scenarios. Nevertheless, the latest OECD/IEA study indicates that the world electricity demand may increase by 75% until 2010. The World Energy Council's study reference case, published last year, projects an average growth rate of electricity demand of 2.3% per year from 1990-2020. Where is all this electricity to come from?

It has to be better and more widely understood that fossil fuels and nuclear power are the main options which can be deployed broadly, since they have reached the stage of commercial deployment and economic competitiveness. However, the limits to the expansion of fossil fuel use should not be overlooked. Oil and gas resources, recoverable at acceptable costs, will last less than a century. Coal burning is inducing environmental impacts that are progressively becoming unacceptable in most regions of the world. Environmental concerns are calling for measures to reduce atmospheric pollutant emissions. In this connection, a report issued two year ago by the Club of Rome stated that “the use of coal and oil is probably more dangerous to society, because of the carbon dioxide they produce, than nuclear energy. There are therefore strong arguments for keeping the nuclear option and for the development of fast breeders ...”. It was said after the Chernobyl disaster that an accident anywhere is an accident everywhere. It was rightly added recently that CO2 emitted anywhere is CO2 emitted everywhere.

Renewable energy sources are often presented as “the” solution to energy problems of tomorrow’s world. I do share the view that efforts should be made to exploit renewable resources wherever they prove to be a viable option. However, taking into account the present stage of development of solar energy systems, windmills and other renewable sources of energy, a major contribution by these sources to global energy and electricity supply is more than questionable in the short and medium term. Moreover, these sources are not free from environmental impacts.

Nuclear power alone will not solve the problems of secure and sustainable energy supply of the world. But energy strategies aimed at sustainability and addressing concerns over greenhouse gases without use of nuclear power seem to me, and to a number of experts in energy system analysis, highly unrealistic.

The challenge for the nuclear industry is to maintain and improve the technical and economic performance of nuclear power while enhancing even further its safety and environmental credentials.

Natural uranium and thorium resources, technologies and industrial capabilities are available and could be developed further to support a broader deployment of nuclear power. The economics of nuclear electricity generation make it an attractive option for base load electricity supply, especially in countries which have no access to cheap fossil fuels. One should also be aware that the implementation of more stringent environmental regulations may increase the costs of fossil fuelled systems, while technological progress and feed back from experience are expected to lead to some decrease in the costs of electricity generation by nuclear power plants.

Scientists and engineers are now designing and developing advanced reactors which will enhance the efficiency, reliability and safety of nuclear power plants and at the same time reduce costs. New approaches which incorporate innovative features are drawing from more than 6000 reactor years of experience acquired through operation and maintenance of the nuclear power plants worldwide. Substantial progress regarding in core fuel management and fuel design has already been achieved leading to a better utilization of the energy content of uranium as well as a reduction of the volume of spent fuel and radioactive waste to be disposed. The evolution of nuclear fuel burnup shows an increasing trend and values around 20 to 50% higher than today’s average are expected by the turn of the century. Although at present the low uranium prices are not providing incentives to the development of recycling nor of breeder reactors, these options still offer long-term perspectives which should be kept open. The Russian, French and Japanese experience in the design and operation of breeder reactors may come to provide an important and welcome basis for the enhancement of their performance and commercial deployment.

Nuclear waste management and disposal is one of the issues that is in great need of being better explained to the public. Past carelessness about nuclear waste, especially in the military sector, whether in the former Soviet Union or the United States, must be dealt with in a decisive manner. However, the negligence of the past must not be allowed to hide the fact that satisfactory methods of responsible disposal of nuclear waste are available today.

Low and intermediate level radioactive wastes arising from nuclear electricity generation which amount to less than 800 tonnes per GW(e) and year after conditioning can be permanently disposed of in near surface or underground repositories which are already in operation in several countries. High level wastes, which contain 99% of the radioactivity of wastes from nuclear power, amount, per GW(e) and year, to only some 30 tonnes of spent fuel or 3 cubic metres of conditioned waste after reprocessing. While final repositories for these wastes have not yet been built, assessments based on simulation models, laboratory studies and in situ testing have shown the feasibility of their safe disposal. Furthermore, decisions have been taken recently by some countries regarding the construction of such repositories early in the next century.

There is often talk about "alternative energies". I think it is time to talk about "alternative wastes". The public must be made aware that the main alternative to nuclear waste is waste from burnt fossil fuel. One should also be aware that the final disposal sites of burnt fossil fuel wastes are not deep geological formations but the surface of the earth and the atmosphere.

Let me now turn to nuclear safety. Ensuring the safe operation of present and future nuclear power plants everywhere in the world is a prerequisite for a general revival of the nuclear option. Safe operation is the result of many different factors, e.g. technology, operational experience, regulatory supervision. The main responsibility lies with the operators and national authorities. However, international measures play an increasing role. The IAEA also provides services to Member States, upon request, in assessing the safety of their nuclear facilities. Many expert missions are sent every year around the world. The operation of many reactors in the former Soviet Union and in Central and Eastern Europe has been the subject of such safety assessments organized by the IAEA - OSART and ASSET missions. With co-operation from nuclear engineers and nuclear authorities in these countries, the Agency has also devoted considerable efforts to bring about impartial and authoritative international assessment of positive features and weaknesses in different reactor designs, like the various models of VVER and of the RBMK, and thereby to create a basis for subsequent work to upgrade their safety.

While technological improvement will undoubtedly enhance even further the safety of nuclear power plants and fuel cycle facilities, the implementation of a global nuclear safety culture will be a key factor to ensure their safe operation, maintenance and decommissioning. The adoption in Vienna, two weeks ago, of an international convention on the safety of nuclear power plants, under the auspices of the IAEA, will further the emergence of an international safety regime. It is true that most nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities are located within the territories of States and accidents in them will chiefly affect host countries. We know, however, that radioactive fall-out may cross borders and we have seen how opinion across the world is affected instantaneously by nuclear events anywhere. Nuclear safety, although incontestably a national responsibility, is therefore becoming an increasingly important subject of international concern and co-operation. I stress co-operation because there is no international regulatory body that is asked to license or withdraw licenses from power reactors, but there is increasingly international co-operation to analyse nuclear safety regardless of country and to provide advice and assistance. The latest mechanism for this is the convention on the safety of nuclear power plants.

Before I close I should also like to touch the question of liability for nuclear accidents. Safety is closely related with protection against possible nuclear damage. In the last few years, the question of nuclear liability has attracted increased attention, and the IAEA is actively involved in the work to improve the existing international liability regime, including the revision of the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage. The Russian Federation is not a party to that Convention, but, as I know, is considering the possibility of adhering to it. Work seems also to be underway in Russia to adopt national legislation regarding liability for nuclear damage. Given the social and political significance of this matter, I hope it will be given adequate attention and priority. International co-operation in this field is very welcome.

I would like to conclude by encouraging the nuclear industry to pursue its efforts to enhance the good performance of nuclear power plants and fuel cycle facilities. The present obstacles to a general nuclear power revival should not be underestimated In my view, however, the potential for a broader deployment of nuclear power justifies sustained programmes of research and development. They should make us ready for a revival of the nuclear power option. They should also help to trigger such revival.