It is a pleasure to address you today. For the past forty years nuclear energy has made a major contribution to energy supply, particularly in developed countries, and nuclear techniques have brought substantial benefits in industry, agriculture, water resource and environment management and human health - all of which are areas of OECD and IAEA interest.
In this time of increasing globalization, both challenges and opportunities impact on practically every aspect of the safe and peaceful use of nuclear energy. The development of sustainable development strategies requires that objective consideration be given to the role of nuclear power. The imperative to ensure a high level of nuclear safety around the world requires a comprehensive and legally binding safety regime supported by an enhanced safety culture. The prospects to curb nuclear weapons proliferation and to move towards nuclear disarmament depend critically on the availability of an effective system of verification. And the need to raise the standard of living of the world's poorest requires the efficient transfer of technology, including nuclear technology.
My intention is to present an overview of the role and work of the IAEA under four headings: the role of nuclear power in the next century; the management of nuclear power in this century; the challenge of verification, safeguards and the security of nuclear material; and the particular importance and contribution of nuclear technology transfer.
The IAEA was established 41 years ago to be the focal point for international co-operation in the use of nuclear energy. The Statute outlines the twin objectives of the Agency: to seek to enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace and development and to ensure, so far as it is able, that atomic energy is used at a high level of safety and exclusively for peaceful purposes. The two objectives are interdependent.
The Agency was never intended to "promote" nuclear energy in any commercial sense. Its role is to be an objective institution that serves as a centre for standard setting, independent analysis, expert advice, technology transfer and impartial oversight and verification.
The Agency now has 128 Member States. The regular budget for 1999 is just under $220 million. The Agency also administers the Technical Cooperation Fund for technology transfer with a resource target for 1999 of $88 million. Our total regular staff is just over 1,900, drawn from ninety nationalities.
Turning now to the role of nuclear power in the twenty-first century - a subject which is also of concern to the OECD Council - in many respects nuclear power is at a cross road. There are compelling reasons why it should continue to be a major source of world energy production, but there are also substantial hurdles. Policy decisions and capital investments made, almost entirely in the pre-Chernobyl period, resulted in the situation at the end of 1997, where 437 nuclear reactors operating in 31 countries provided about 17 per cent of global electricity supply, slightly lower than the previous year. Several existing reactors are now approaching the end of their design life. Decisions must be made to extend their time in service, to replace them with new plants or to find other options. And decisions must be made with respect to the accumulation of spent fuel, radioactive wastes and worldwide radioactive sources.
Today the growth of nuclear power is at a standstill in Western Europe and North America. The impact of the current financial crisis on planned expansion of nuclear power in parts of Asia and Eastern Europe is not yet clear. In many countries, public concern over nuclear safety including waste management is a critical inhibiting factor not only on decisions to construct new nuclear power plants but also on the continued operation of safe and efficient existing power plants. Moreover, in countries which are deregulating their energy markets, the relatively high initial capital costs of new plants and concerns about economic competitiveness have tended to focus new investment elsewhere, particularly on combined cycle gas power plants.
On the other hand, global energy demand is growing, driven mainly by growing economies in developing countries. It is projected to increase two to three fold for developing countries in the next thirty years, depending on the economic growth scenario. Concern about possible global climate change is also growing, leading the industrialized countries to agree, at the Kyoto Conference, to lower their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Energy produced from fossil fuels accounts for about half of man-made GHG emissions. Except for nuclear or hydro power (which has limited growth potential), there are not yet any other economically viable, minimal-GHG-emission options for base load power generation. The extensive use of renewable resources for this purpose does not appear to be close at hand. And for many countries, security of energy supply remains a high national priority.
The choice of nuclear power and of a particular energy mix are national decisions. The IAEA however, has a central role in ensuring that a full and fair hearing continues to be given to nuclear power as an important component of many national energy strategies, together with improvement of energy efficiency, and the use of renewable energy sources and clean technologies for improved use of fossil fuels. It is essential that the nuclear power option remains available. It should not be ruled out on subjective grounds.
Our role is to support Member States who have already implemented, or are considering implementing, nuclear power, fuel cycle and waste management programmes including assisting them in comparative assessment of different energy options.
Since 1992, in close co-operation with eight other international organizations including the NEA (European Commission, World Bank, ESCAP, IBRD, IIASA, OPEC, UNIDO, WMO), the Agency has developed the tools and methodologies for the objective comparative assessment of different energy chains and conversion technology options through the 'DECADES' project (Databases and Methodologies for Comparative Assessment of Different Energy Sources for Electricity Generation). The DECADES methodological framework is being used by some 35 Member States to independently evaluate their energy options.
The Agency is also contributing to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report and is working together with UNDP, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the World Energy Council to conduct a world energy assessment for the UN Commission on Sustainable Development which, at its Ninth Session in 2001, will address energy issues for the first time.
One of the most serious challenges to the role of nuclear power now and in the future relates to questions of public confidence in its safe use. To restore public confidence, a record of operational safety of all nuclear power plants has to be demonstrated and a satisfactory resolution of issues concerning spent fuel and radioactive waste management has to be reached.
Over the past year the global safety record for nuclear power plants has shown continued improvement as a result of peer reviews, increased safety awareness of power plant managers and substantial international assistance programmes to upgrade plants built to earlier standards. The incidents which were reported to the joint IAEA /NEA Incident Reporting System were problems that were detected and corrected well before any actual health or environmental impact could result.
However, the Agency's annual Nuclear Safety Review details other events concerning management practices in nuclear power plants which provide a warning that even well developed nuclear power programmes can experience a gradual deterioration in safety performance unless there are continuous efforts to maintain and improve nuclear safety. And continued incidents involving radiation sources, some in insignificant quantities such as the atmospheric release of caesium-137 from a scrap metal furnace in Spain or the recent revelations of contamination of transport containers in Europe, but others of more significant health impact such as the discovery of several unshielded radiation sources in Georgia, underline the need for effective safety practices throughout the entire nuclear fuel cycle.
Nuclear safety is a global public concern. By virtue of its mandate and membership, the IAEA plays the lead role in seeking to develop a comprehensive nuclear safety regime that consists of three elements: international binding agreements; safety standards; and measures to provide for the application of those agreements and standards.
In recent years, several important international conventions, negotiated under the Agency's auspices, have helped to fill some gaps in the international nuclear safety and liability regime. Of particular interest is the Convention on Nuclear Safety which entered into force in 1994. Its objective is to achieve and maintain a consistently high level of safety at nuclear power plants around the world. Last week Contracting Parties submitted their national reports on compliance with their obligations. The coming months will provide the first test for the Convention's system of international peer review of national reports.
The second element of our safety programme is the development of internationally agreed safety standards which cover the areas of nuclear, radiation, waste management and transport. The Agency's Safety Standards Series represents international consensus on safety requirements and their implementation. In the present biennium we have undertaken the preparation or revision of the entire corpus of safety standards - a total of some seventy documents - to ensure that they are comprehensive, scientifically accurate and current.
The third element of our safety programme is to assist States to effectively apply the safety norms and standards. The Agency offers a wide range of direct assistance and safety services. These services include the Operational Safety Review Teams (OSARTs), the Assessment of Safety Significant Events Teams (ASSETs) and the Assessment of Safety Culture in Organizations Teams (ASCOTs). Later this year the one hundredth OSART mission will be conducted - to the Golfech nuclear power plant in France.
These services can be used to study very specific issues. In the past few months at the request of the Austrian and Slovak Governments, the Agency has assembled an independent group of internationally recognized experts to examine concerns raised about embrittlement of the reactor pressure vessel in the Mochovce Unit 1 nuclear power plant. And in response to an invitation from the Government of Ukraine, the Agency organized a workshop in Kiev last June to deal with cracking of large diameter pipes in RBMK reactors.
The IAEA acts as technical adviser to the G-24 with respect to its role as the primary co-ordination mechanism for assistance to upgrade the safety of nuclear power plants in Eastern Europe. We provide advice to strengthen legislative and regulatory infrastructures in Member States through the International Regulatory Review Teams (IRRT) service and through several technical cooperation projects on upgrading radiation and waste safety infrastructure whose objective is to have in place, by the end of this year, a working system of notification, authorization and control, and an inventory of all radiation sources in the 53 participating developing countries.
An Agency service of increasing use is the radiological assessment of areas affected by residual radioactive material from accidents, nuclear weapon testing or past waste management practices. This year saw the completion of the fourth in a series of Agency assessments of these radiological legacies. The study of the present and future impact of the radiological situation at the atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa in French Polynesia, which was carried out at the request of the French Government, involved the participation of 55 experts and 18 laboratories under the supervision of an International Advisory Committee. I expect that more States may wish to benefit from similar radiological studies.
I would like to highlight an area of particular concern: spent fuel and radioactive waste management. Substantial quantities of spent fuel from research and test reactors that have become physically degraded exist in ageing storage facilities. They pose potential health, safety and environmental problems at many sites. Spent fuel from power reactors has also accumulated rapidly. The current global stock of about 200,000 tonnes is projected to increase to about 340,000 tonnes by the year 2010. Existing and planned storage capacity will keep ahead of accumulated inventories, but there is concern that in some countries the resources will not be available to construct the planned facilities. For some countries, regional co-operative management arrangements may be an attractive prospect.
Plutonium in separated form and in spent fuel is also accumulating. In the civilian sector, about 170 tonnes of separated plutonium is in storage. An additional 100 tonnes is to be released from US and Russian military programmes and some 1000 tonnes are contained in spent fuel from reactors. It is hoped that, through international co-operation, a common understanding will emerge on the best ways to deal with this and other fuel cycle issues.
Low and intermediate level waste is generated both by the nuclear power sector and by the medical, industrial, agricultural and research sectors. Treatment for minimizing the volume of such waste for storage and disposal requires improved management systems. Through the assessment of different technologies and the dissemination of information, the Agency is supporting Member States to address low and intermediate level waste management issues.
Experts agree that technical solutions exist for the safe and permanent disposal of high level radioactive wastes. However, progress in demonstrating these solutions has not been as rapid as originally foreseen. Decisions on the final disposal of waste can be delayed but cannot be avoided. I am concerned that the longer this issue remains a public concern, the more difficult it will be for nuclear power to significantly contribute to sustainable development.
At this point I would like to commend the valuable work of OECD Agencies, and particularly the NEA, in contributing to the scientific and technical basis for the safe use of nuclear energy and in fostering understanding of its environmental and economic aspects. Co-operation in these areas is a necessity. I welcome the initiative of the Director General of the NEA, Luis Echavarri, following the conclusions of the Birkhofer report, to clarify the relations between the IAEA and the NEA through a Memorandum of Understanding to give a modern meaning to the 1960 Framework Agreement between the two Agencies. I look forward to establishing clear and transparent lines for areas of cooperation, areas of joint activities and areas of separate competence, recognizing the different mandates and membership of the two Agencies.
I turn now to the area of nuclear verification and security of material and the role of the IAEA to provide assurance that commitments to use nuclear energy exclusively for peaceful purposes are fulfilled. The hopes for a more secure world rest crucially on advancing the agenda for nuclear arms reduction and their eventual elimination. An effective verification system is indispensable to the realization of these hopes.
Over 180 States have committed themselves to IAEA comprehensive safeguards. In 1997, safeguards were applied to over 900 facilities involving more than 10,000 days of inspection.
Since 1991, and as a result of the Agency's experience in Iraq, it has become clear that effective safeguards must provide assurance not only about nuclear activities declared by a State but also about the absence of any undeclared activities. Efforts since that time have aimed at developing a cost effective system that deals with both declared and possible undeclared activities.
With the approval by our Board of Governors last year of the Model Additional Protocol to the safeguards agreements, the Agency has obtained the legal authority to implement a more effective safeguards system that affords the Agency a vantage point from which to develop a more comprehensive picture than before of all nuclear activities in a State and to detect and verify possible non-peaceful activities at an early stage.
Good progress is being made in the conclusion of these Protocols. Additional Protocols have been signed for thirty-two States and other Parties, including the fifteen members of the European Union. Our goal is to ensure that by the year 2000 all States have concluded outstanding safeguards agreements and also the Additional Protocol.
As you are aware, two special cases of IAEA verification are in Iraq and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK). In 1991 the Agency was mandated under Security Council resolution 687(1991) to carry out on-site inspections of Iraq's clandestine nuclear weapons programme and destroy, remove or render harmless the components of that programme. The Agency's inspection and verification activities in Iraq have resulted in the development of a technically coherent picture of Iraq's clandestine nuclear programme. However, as with all verification activities, a degree of uncertainty is inherent in any countrywide verification process that seeks to prove the absence of readily concealable objects or activities. The Agency is focusing most of its resources on the implementation and technical strengthening of its ongoing monitoring and verification (OMV) of Iraq's compliance with its obligations.
In the DPRK, the Agency continues to assert its right to perform inspections under the NPT safeguards agreement and, since 1994, at the request of the Security Council, has maintained a continuous presence of inspectors for the purpose of verifying a 'freeze' of the DPRK nuclear programme as negotiated bilaterally with the United States under the "Agreed Framework". The situation has remained stable and we have been able to confirm that the "freeze" continues. However, in ten rounds of technical discussions, there has been no progress on long-standing and important issues, including agreed measures for the preservation of information which must remain available to enable the Agency to verify, in the future, the correctness and completeness of the DPRK's initial declaration and future compliance with its safeguards agreement.
The IAEA Director General also has a mandate from the General Conference to hold consultations with States of the Middle East region with respect to the early application of full-scope Agency safeguards to all nuclear activities in the region. With the stalemate in the peace process, no progress has been possible in this regard.
The IAEA is also engaged in the development of measures required for the verification of nuclear arms control and reduction.
Last month the Conference on Disarmament finally agreed to commence negotiation of a treaty prohibiting the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices (FMT). In furtherance of a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution, I wrote to the President of the Conference on Disarmament on 28 August to offer the assistance of the Agency in developing the technical verification arrangements for such a treaty.
Over the past two years the Agency has been involved in discussions with the Russian Federation and the United States of America to develop the modalities for possible IAEA verification in the USA and the Russian Federation that nuclear material transferred from the military sector to the peaceful sector, notably fissile material from dismantled nuclear weapons, remained peacefully stored or was rendered unusable for weapons purposes. Progress was made last week when I met with Minister Adamov of the Russian Federation and Secretary Richardson of the USA to set goals for future work.
I have also welcomed the recent decision of the UK, as a result of its Strategic Defence Review, to determine that substantial amounts of fissile material are now surplus to its military programme and that these will be available for IAEA safeguards under the Voluntary Offer Safeguards Agreement between the UK and the Agency.
The potential for nuclear weapons proliferation and for threats to public safety from illicit trafficking in nuclear material and other radioactive sources is an area of major international concern. The Agency's Illicit Trafficking Database Programme has recorded continued incidents of illicit movement of nuclear material and other radioactive sources. Since last September, there have been 15 incidents involving nuclear material and 20 involving other radioactive sources.
Through information exchange, training, technical assistance and other support services, the Agency assists Member States in their efforts to prevent, detect and respond to theft, diversion and other unauthorized uses of nuclear material and other radioactive sources. Also, at the request of the United Nations General Assembly, the Agency is contributing to the ongoing work of the Ad Hoc Committee established by the General Assembly to elaborate a draft convention on the suppression of acts of nuclear terrorism.
The transfer of technology, bearing in mind the special needs of developing countries, is a key element of the Agency's mandate. Support for nuclear technology transfer for exclusively peaceful purposes is an integral part of the international consensus relating to the peaceful use of nuclear energy that is embodied in the IAEA Statute and the NPT. And the IAEA is the principal vehicle for multilateral nuclear technology transfer.
The role of the Agency is to continue to ensure, where nuclear technology remains the most effective and appropriate technology to address a particular problem, that this technology is transferred in the most efficient, effective and safe manner. The size of the Technical Co-operation (TC) programme is modest, but the impact and results have been outstanding.
The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) to control pests on an area-wide basis, which was developed in collaboration with the FAO by the Agency's laboratories, is being increasingly applied in developing and developed countries. In Zanzibar, confirmation of a successful Agency project to eradicate the tsetse fly has enabled the Government to launch a five-year programme on improving livestock productivity to achieve self-sufficiency in milk and meat products. This experience is now being applied in other countries such as Ethiopia in the Southern Rift Valley. In the USA, Argentina, Israel, South Africa and Madeira in Portugal, the SIT is being applied as a biological technique to replace insecticide use to control the fruit fly with lower costs and increased effectiveness.
In the area of human health, the Agency currently supports forty national projects and four major regional projects to upgrade, or make locally available for the first time, radiation therapy services for cancer treatment. The Agency also supports national and regional screening programmes in more than 20 developing countries to use the simple and cost-effective radioimmunoassay technique to screen babies for thyroid deficiency which can lead to severe mental impairment unless detected and treated promptly.
Nuclear environmental monitoring techniques have made a major contribution to a regional technical co-operation project in Europe for Marine Environmental Assessment of the Black Sea to determine, inter alia, post-Chernobyl radioactivity levels. The project has established a reliable basis for Black Sea environmental management decisions and the planning of remedial action in co-ordination with other national and regional programmes.
To continue to be able to provide its service with a high level of quality, the Agency maintains two world standard scientific and service laboratories: the Marine Environment Laboratory (MEL) in Monaco and the Seibersdorf Laboratory outside Vienna. In this International Year of the Ocean, I would highlight the unique contribution of MEL to addressing the global issues of marine pollution, particularly through its active support of the UN Global Plan of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land Based Activities.
My intention today has been to familiarise you with the role of the IAEA and the range and scope of our responsibilities and programmes. I would hope that three conclusions are self evident. First, that the many peaceful applications of nuclear energy are making a very substantial contribution to the welfare of mankind and the goals of economic growth and sustainable development. In the absence of alternatives, there is a need to keep the nuclear option available through comparative assessment of energy options, constant attention to matters of safety and effective communication to improve public understanding of nuclear energy.
The second conclusion is that maximizing the positive contribution of nuclear energy while reducing apprehension is a major undertaking. While nuclear safety, non proliferation and arms control are daily headlines, we should bear in mind that the global investment in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy is in the trillions of dollars. Maintaining this investment safely and efficiently, and effectively addressing the many urgent concerns, such as radioactive waste and spent fuel management, requires concerted international efforts.
The third conclusion is that, in this period of change and uncertainty, realizing the opportunities to make this a safer and more secure world depends on an effective system of verification for non-proliferation and nuclear arms reduction. While it is Governments who must take the necessary political initiatives, their willingness to do so will be greatly facilitated by enhanced confidence in the effectiveness of verification.
The IAEA is committed to meeting the challenges before us. We welcome the continued co-operation of the OECD particularly with respect to fostering the safe and peaceful uses of nuclear energy for economic growth and sustainable development.