Brief Thoughts about Where We Stand with the ENS Today

by Andrej Stritar, Outgoing ENS President

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As my two-year term as president of the European Nuclear Society (ENS) has now come to an end, I have tried to create a clear picture of where we stand at this moment. When I was elected in May 2001 in Stockholm, the situation was far from simple. At that time, we were looking for a new secretary general for our secretariat in Bern and the Society was faced with very serious financial pressures. Our major projects: the publication, Nuclear Europe Worldscan, and the European Nuclear Congress 2002, were jeopardised and we had to find an effective solution quickly.

In autumn 2001, while still under the presidency of Agneta Rising, we decided to move the secretariat to Brussels and share it with FORATOM, the European Atomic Forum. Accordingly, at the spring General Assembly of the ENS, in 2002, we dissolved the ENS headquartered in Switzerland and created a new one, based in Belgium. So, for several months, I had the unusual honour of being the president of two European Nuclear Societies – one being liquidated in Switzerland and another one being put together in Belgium.

This transition from one society to the other was also an interesting challenge and a test for the ENS. Each member society was free to decide if it still wanted to remain a member. Most of our major members immediately renewed their membership and there were only a few which, due to some procedural matters, had to join later.

I am glad to report that, at the end of 2003, the Russian Nuclear Society was once again a member and the Yugoslav Nuclear Society is again seeking to join - after being out of the picture for a year or two. At this moment, the only major society that used to be a member but is still missing is the Ukrainian one. Unfortunately, we have been unable to establish contact with it over the past few years.

In October 2002, the new secretariat successfully organised the European Nuclear Congress (ENC) in Lille, France. Although it did not quite come up to the same standard as previous ENCs, at least we managed to pull it off without the ENS experiencing financial problems. The other major ENS service to member societies unfortunately could not survive. 2002 was the last year that Nuclear Europe Worldscan was published. I feel that this is possibly one of the biggest losses to the society ever, because I always considered it to be the strongest cohesive force for all the members.

In the dynamic, transitional year of 2002 the ENS Board had to seriously rethink and redirect the society’s activities. We set the following major tasks for the ENS:

• maintaining a comprehensive and useful home page;

• replacing the Nuclear Europe Worldscan;

• the High Scientific Council;

• Young Generation Network activities;

• establishing and maintaining a relationship with the EU; and

• conferences.

I am glad to see how things have gradually stabilised. The society is now running with a substantially lower budget than it had before in Switzerland. The new secretariat was successful in taking over the running of the society and the organisation of the traditional ENS conferences on nuclear public information in practice, known as PIME, and on Research Reactor Fuel Management (RRFM). The ENS Programme Committee is successfully co-ordinating nuclear conferences at European level. The High Scientific Council is successful in creating position statements; however, we all have to do more about their dissemination. The ENS has a new home page which is regularly maintained. We have decided to continue with the European Nuclear Conferences every second year, purely as scientific conferences. The next one is to take place in 2005.

It has to be said that we have been less successful in re-launching Nuclear Europe Worldscan or its replacement. There were discussions between the German and French Nuclear Societies and the British Nuclear Energy Society about combining their journals and, at the same time, creating something for the ENS, but these proposals did not develop much further from first ideas. So we are now bridging the gap created by the lack of printed material with the electronic bulletin. Encouragingly, there has been a new development: the French, German and Spanish Nuclear Societies have agreed to produce a section common to their three journals and to offer it to other ENS societies. It now seems that, even before mid 2004, we might get the first issue!

All in all, I have the feeling that the ENS has survived its dynamic/transition period which has spanned several years, and that we are now entering a new kind of stable situation. It is, of course, up to us all to make the ENS even better in the future. In order to make this possible, everybody is invited to come up with ideas.

Finally, let me stress that being the president of the ENS was a great honour for me personally. It will certainly remain one of the highlights of my professional career. Thank you to everybody who contributed to the activities of the ENS in this period: Agneta Rising as the past president, Bertrand Barré as the vice president and the incoming president; members of the Board: Wolf-Dieter Krebs, Frank Deconinck, Peter Leister, and the treasurer, André Versteegh; chairman of the Programme Committee, Gaston Meskens; chairman of the Nuclear Information Committee Europe, NICE, Torsten Bohl, and, of course, to our professional secretariat staff: secretary general, Peter Haug, and his assistants, Gunnar Wickström and Andrew Teller. Also, thank you to all the other friends who contributed either to the work of the General Assemblies or otherwise.

I wish all the ENS members a happy and successful 2004. Furthermore, I wish Bertrand Barré a smooth road ahead and a fruitful presidency of the ENS as a prosperous society. We all have to help him in achieving that goal.