REMARKS BY DAVID KING
Inaugural Ceremony of the World Nuclear University
4 September 2003

Many congratulations on this venture. I’m delighted to be sharing this platform with so many people I admire.

James Lovelock has given you a very clear picture of the threats we’re facing through environmental pollution - in particular, through the generation of fossil fuel exhausts. It has very much been a key endeavour of mine in this government to see that that message is carried through. I was very heavily involved in the generation of the White Paper on energy by the UK government that was published earlier this year. I’m delighted to be able to say that, in that White Paper, the government committed itself to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent by the year 2050, based on 1990 levels. I believe we are the first government to come out with a clear statement of this kind.

Importantly, the commitment stipulates that we should be on a linear path to this reduction, not that we should leave the reduction to some later government. It is the climate-change imperative that was very much in the mind of the government in drawing up the White Paper - as was the other imperative, which is security of energy supply. Those were the two major issues that the White Paper was aimed at.

The focus on meeting the emission-reduction targets in that White Paper is on renewables and on energy efficiency gain. But the White Paper does recognize, in a very important paragraph, that the nuclear option needs to be kept open. We’re aiming to produce 10 percent of the energy on our grid from renewables by 2010 and 20 percent by 2020. But I think we also have to recognize that currently 25 percent of our energy is from nuclear: if current nuclear plant is closed down by 2020, we would be down to three or four percent. The sums can be done by yourselves.

If we examine the situation of keeping the option open, then quite clearly it is vital that we maintain the skills to exploit that option in the future. This is a reason why I very much welcome this venture: the WNU can play a critically important role in seeing that our skills base is there when the realization of this threat of climate change comes fully through to the governments of this world.

Internationally, as we see from the number of attendees at this meeting, the role of nuclear in our low-carbon armoury well recognized. It is also being recognized by governments: In Europe, the United States and China, there is significant debate on these issues, and the US is actively exploring the possibilities of new nuclear generation.

The US is also taking a lead in looking at the future of a hydrogen economy. What we have to stress is that hydrogen has to be generated somehow. We all very much welcome the presence here of Geoffrey Ballard, who has done so much for the development of the fuel cell and its implications for the future, especially in transport. We must also focus on how we produce that particular source of energy for driving those fuel cells.

Key to all of this is the development of a proper process for dealing with nuclear waste, and I believe as a practicing scientist - and I’ve been one all my life - now thrust into this position (in government), I believe this is a fascinating problem with many possibilities that need to be explored carefully. I don’t feel that this is at all a static situation, but a dynamic one, with new solutions appearing every day. Strides in the right direction are being made.

It has to be recognized that a country such as the United Kingdom has a large amount of legacy waste. That legacy waste is the particular problem, not the waste generated by the current range of nuclear power stations. It’s the legacy waste that arises from our having been involved in the United Kingdom in the development of nuclear power. It was our involvement in that development phase that really produced a lot of that waste.

It is important also to recognize that there is another legacy from that waste: a legacy of public opinion. Somehow over the coming years we have to tackle that issue and tackle it openly and properly.

When I took on the post as chief scientific adviser of the government, one of the first things I did was set up a group to examine the current state of energy research in the UK: we put out a report, it is now being acted on in full, and it includes setting up a national energy research centre, which I believe will be up and running from April next year. And I very much hope that it will gear into the international community working along these lines. As an outcome of this, I also chair a high-level energy research group that brings together all of the public bodies involved in energy research in the UK. There are exciting medium-term developments in the nuclear industry - the modular pebble bed reactor being one. I would like to emphasize that there’s another form of nuclear energy - fusion - and I’ve been quite heavily involved in the European effort to see that we the fusion program forward. I’m sure that the new ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), wherever it is finally sited, will be a major point of the future in terms of the long-term viability of nuclear power on electricity grids around the world.

From a young scientist’s point of view, the message to get across is that nuclear energy continues to offer exciting and new challenges, with a strong potential to provide a path forward for our future energy problems and for the sustainability of our global low-carbon economies. It is an industry with a vibrant future - that’s the message to get across, and let me also say a critically important future.

John Ritch mentioned the London smog in which 12,000 people died in 1952. At that time it was the burning of coal that generated the smog from incomplete combustion of carbon. We now completely combust the fossil fuels and produce the gas that I remember being described in my days at school as a coloorless, ordorless, tasteless gas - which therefore implies that it caused no problems if we emitted carbon dioxide. We now know sadly from the number of deaths around Europe this summer - which certainly exceed 10,000 arising from the very hot weather - that climate change into the future is quite likely the biggest problem we will face over the coming century.