Mr. President, distinguished authorities, dear participants, I feel honoured and pleased to open this large Conference.
Firstly, this event has given me the opportunity to return to Spain, with its grandeur and renowned hospitality,and to visit for the third time in my life both Andalucía and Sevilla. I still remember what a strong impression it made on me when I visited Sevilla and Andalucía as a student during the Semana Santa in 1954. The Andalucía that was a meeting place for the Islamic and the Christian worlds, and for Arabian and Iberian peoples; the Sevilla that made headway to the "New World" of America, another meeting place of peoples and cultures - what better location than this to hold a scientific Conference on such a worldwide subject as the health effects of radiation?
I would like to begin by expressing appreciation to the Government of Spain and to the authorities of Andalucía and Sevilla for hosting our Conference in this beautiful and historical location.
Secondly, I am happy to share in the opening of the Conference together with Director General Nakajima of the World Health Organization, which is co-sponsoring this event with the IAEA. The Agency and the WHO have co-sponsored several important events, all of which were successful and set good examples within the United Nations System. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) has also co-operated with us in the organization of the Conference and we are very pleased to share the endeavour with that highly respected Committee.
Thirdly, this Conference at Sevilla gives me the opportunity to meet the radiation protection community and the radiobiology community at a moment that is somewhat special to me. This is the last major event that I shall inaugurate as Director General of the IAEA. It gives me an opportunity to share some reflections with a science community, the importance of which I have come to understand and appreciate during my 16 years of office.
It was more than a decade ago that I first went to an important meeting in the area of radiation protection - in Sydney, Australia. Since then I have attended several other large meetings, such as the Conference on Radiation and Society in Paris, the major Conference on the Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and the last IRPA Congress, both in Vienna.
At all these events I have underlined the importance that the IAEA places on the discipline of radiation protection.
Perhaps I should tell you that my own personal route of entry to the nuclear field has been via the issue of protecting the environment and the public from pollution and other adverse consequences of energy production. I became convinced and I am only more strongly convinced at this juncture that ensuring a sustainable energy policy in the world today requires an increasing reliance on nuclear power. My conviction is based partly on the fact that nuclear power generated electricity is cost-wise roughly on par with coal-based electricity, that it is a technology that holds promise of much further evolution, and that it provides the countries using it with a measure of energy independence. However, my conviction is based even more on the fact that the nuclear generation of electricity is at a high level of safety and benign to the environment. Especially at this juncture when the world is concerned about the risk of global warming and is searching with increasing intensity for energy sources which emit no carbon dioxide, I am convinced that a revisiting and a revival of the nuclear power option will be indispensible. We should exit the nuclear weapons era - and there are good hopes that gradually we can do that - and we should move on in the nuclear power era. A precondition for this is proper attention to radiation protection in the widest sense. And a wider understanding of radiation protection. You, the participants in this Conference have important roles to play in both these regards.
For the IAEA, radiation protection has been and will continue to be a significant field of activity. It is worth noting that forty years ago - when the Agency was established and when radiation protection issues were not nearly so widely aired as they are today - the founders of the IAEA decided that the main functions of the Agency would include establishing international standards for protection of health from exposure to ionizing radiation; and also providing for the application of these standards - not only to the Agency's own operations but also, at the request of a State, to any of the State's activities.
My predecessors attached great importance to these Agency functions and laid the basis for many activitiesthat have gained momentum over the last decade. I have tried to follow their example and I should like to mention the following:
First, the Agency has succeeded in establishing a complete corpus of standards for radiation protection. This comprises over a hundred detailed and sophisticated publications expressing a global consensus on a difficult and sometimes controversial subject. Particularly significant is the consensus which underlies the most fundamental of these publications - the International Basic Safety Standards for Protection against Ionizing Radiation and for the Safety of Radiation Sources - the so-called BSS. With the IAEA as the lead agency, five major international organizations, namely the FAO, the ILO, the NEA of the OECD, the Pan American Health Organization and the WHO, consolidated the work of hundreds of experts into the requirements and guidelines governing radiation protection today.
The Agency standards are the result of a delicate and elaborate review and approval process involving the work of four standing technical committees, one senior advisory commission and all Agency Member States. The radiation safety standards are based on the advice provided by ICRP - a unique professional organization which has been the backbone of the Agency's work in radiation protection. The standards cover a vast range of topics: occupational protection, protection of patients in radiotherapy and radiodiagnostics, protection of the public and the environment, safety of radiation sources, preparedness for and response to radiation emergencies, safe transport of radiation materials, security and illicit trafficking of radioactive substances, control of discharges of radioactive effluents, safe disposal of radioactive waste, and the legacy of radioactive residues.
Secondly, I should point to a number of achievements of the IAEA in the field of application of the Agency's standards. The Agency was instrumental in the implementation of safety standards in a number of ways: fostering information exchange, co-ordinating research and development, promoting education and training, providing technical co-operation and assistance, and rendering ad hoc services. Let me be more explicit:
- The Agency's engagement in fostering information exchange on radiation protection has grown continuously. Over the past years, we have organized a major meeting for information exchange, such as this Conference, every year. However, that is only the tip of the iceberg. The Agency has organized nearly 50 events every year for the exchange of information on subjects related to radiation protection. And we have not ignored the electronic era. Today you can visit our radiation protection page on the Internet, RASANET, and you will enter a large bank of information on radiation protection;
- There have been great changes in the co-ordination of research and development. About twenty co-ordinated research projects on radiation protection topics are now operative, including topics on such practical subjects as global intercalibration of radiation monitoring equipment.
- I am especially pleased that a strong effort has been dedicated to the promotion of education and training in radiation protection in recent years. Numerous courses, workshops and seminars have been held, and support has been provided for hundreds of fellowships and scientific visits. There have been sixteen Agency sponsored postgraduate courses in radiation protection. They are now being held in English, French, Arabic and Russian, but many in this hall will be happy to note that Castilian was the language in which the first Agency postgraduate course was held in Buenos Aires; and that that course contributed to the development of radiation protection experts for the whole of Latin America.
- The IAEA technical co-operation and assistance programme has increasingly focussed on radiation protection. You may be interested to learn that the Agency has today more than 150 operative radiation protection projects in its Member States. One of these projects - a so-called "model project"- aims at the strengthening of radiation protection infrastructure in no less than 53 developing countries.
After the radiological accident in Goiania, Brazil, in 1987, we concluded that the Agency should provide accident assessment and advisory services to any State that wished to request them. As a result the Agency has been able to build up a formidable repository of information on radiological accidents. It is available to all of you and your colleagues for the never ending process of learning from experience. The latest example is the comprehensive assessment of the tragic accident in San José de Costa Rica, where more than 100 radiotherapy patients were overexposed, some with severe and even fatal consequences. The largest contribution of the Agency in this field was the assessment of the radiological consequences of the Chernobyl accident in the areas affected in Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine. The report of over one thousand pages is today, I understand, a classic reference for specialists.
As you are aware, there are many locations with radioactive residues around the world. Some are the result of past peaceful activities, such as mining of radioactive ores or work with radioactive luminizing paint. Others result from military activities, e.g. remainings from arms production and residues from nuclear weapon testing. At this moment the Agency is heavily engaged with assessments of the radiological situations created by these residues. We have just finished radiological assessments at the Bikini Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands and at Semipalatinsk in the Republic of Kazakhstan. We have also finished a major assessment of the radiological conditions resulting from the dumping of reactor cores and other radioactive materials in the Arctic Sea, and we are about to finalize a comprehensive assessment of the radiological conditions in the atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa in the South Pacific at the request of the Government of France. At the end of the era of nuclear weapons testing I find it most appropriate that the Agency is in this way assessing what the remaining radiological consequences are. I am very much aware that we are often moving and working in areas that are politically charged. But I can tell you that a guiding directive that the Agency's able staff invariably get from me is: stay strictly scientific!
The efforts to establish international standards and to provide for their application are now supported by legally binding undertakings by the States. In recent years, we have developed six major conventions in the field of radiation, nuclear and waste safety. Four of these, namely the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident and the Convention on Assistance in the Case of a Nuclear Accident or Radiological Emergency, the Convention on Nuclear Safety and the recent Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, introduce international legally binding obligations on radiation protection related issues. The recent Joint Convention on Fuel and Waste Safety - which was opened for signature just a few weeks ago - refers in its preamble to the BSS and imposes clear obligations regarding the discharge of radioactive materials to the environment.
The conventions, the international standards, and the various provisions for the implementation of the standards are the core of a much welcomed international normative regime of radiation, nuclear and waste safety. As a lawyer I am very happy to see this regime in place. Yet, we are not at the end of history, rather at the beginning of a new cycle of progress. You only need to glance at the programme of this conference to realize what lies ahead.
With current dramatic developments in molecular biology and with the future completion of the mapping of the human genoma, we shall be in a position to know more precisely the actual effects of radiation on health. Topics which have been discussed with some emotion, such as the dose response at very low doses, the adaptive response of cells to radiation insults and the effects of radiation on apoptosis, will be better understood. This new knowledge will not necessarily make life easier for you. New problems will arise; for instance the issue of genetic susceptibility to radiation, which is already on the horizon will pose technical, ethical and legal matters for the profession to address.
In this complicated and controversial field of the health effects of low level radiation the Agency has no programme of its own. Rather the Agency has relied on the competent UN organ, UNSCEAR, which has co-operated in organizing this conference - and on the advice of professional organizations, such as ICRP. I hope that the discussions that will take place during the first half of this Conference will help to throw light on the many controversies and discussions that have taken place in recent years on this subject.
During the second part of this conference you will discuss how to regulate low levels of dose. Because of its statutory role in the field of safety the Agency has a major interest in your deliberations and conclusions on this matter.
There is much confusion on the subject of the regulation of low doses, mainly but not exclusively, on the part of the public; there are also very confusing statements on the topic among specialists. I need only remind you of the contradictory advice that decision-makers received in Europe at the time of the Chernobyl accident.
I recognize that the confusion is in part due to ignorance. But some of the confusion may also be the result of unnecessary jargon. Some people are surprised that we term a dose limit a level of dose much lower than the natural background radiation doses that we unavoidably incur. To bring about a full understanding of the radiation protection system should be a priority for you today. I can tell you that few decision-makers understand that the system is only intended to control the additions to background doses caused by what are called practices and the reductions from background doses by what are termed interventions. I hope you will use this Conference to discuss these problems in depth and to suggest solutions that will be of importance for the many beneficial uses of radiation.
I should like to end by thanking our Spanish and our local hosts once more for their help and hospitality, and to express my appreciation again to WHO and UNSCEAR for their co-operation in organizing the Conference.
I thank all of you for supporting the Agency's work and I wish you a very successful Conference.