News & Events

Good morning. It is an honor to appear before this distinguished audience, and to be included among such a group of eminent speakers. I commend the organizers for putting together another great program and I’m very happy to see many friends and associates here today.

This morning I want to talk about strengthening public confidence in nuclear power. We all know how important public support is to our business, how hard it is to achieve and how rapidly it can be lost.

I’d like to begin my remarks with a few words from the microbiology community. That may seem unconventional at a nuclear energy conference, but bear with me.

A few months ago, a leading U.S. magazine published an interview with Dr. Craig Venter, the internationally-known microbiologist who led the successful effort to map the human genome. It was a general interview, touching on his life, and his views on many subjects.

In the course of the interview, and, interestingly, not in response to a specific question about nuclear energy, Dr. Venter said, “Scientifically, it’s far, far safer for us to take nuclear waste and bury it…than to continue dumping billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere….We’re contaminating our entire environment now because people are afraid of nuclear energy.”

Dr. Venter is not a physicist, and has no known connection with the nuclear industry. But he does enjoy global prestige because of his scientific accomplishments, and his platform was a magazine read by millions. He is an opinion leader – a person whose views are likely to sway others.