Our Common Commitment to Safeguarding Nuclear Power

It is a great pleasure for me to address the 2nd Annual ESARDA Symposium and this distinguished gathering of safeguards leaders from many countries of the world. The title of my talk today is "Our Common Commitment to Safeguarding Nuclear Power," and I'd like to focus on the basic conviction and professional commitment that we all share in common. All too frequently, we tend to focus attention on our differences in viewpoint and approach to the specifics of how best to implement safeguards. But these differences are surely minor when compared with the overall professional challenge that we face together. We are convened here in Edinburgh at this 2nd ESARDA Symposium because all of us firmly believe that safe — and safeguarded — nuclear energy can make an essential contribution to the energy needs of our individual countries and to an increasingly energy-hungry world. And indeed it is difficult to underestimate the potential contribution from nuclear energy when we consider the energy supply problem from an overall global perspective.