European Nuclear Society President's Report 2002

The year 2002 was very dynamic for the European Nuclear Society, which has gone through more organisational changes than ever before. A year earlier it was decided that we should move the secretariat from Bern, Switzerland to Brussels, Belgium and share it with the industrial organisation, FORATOM. The process was initiated in autumn 2001, lasted throughout 2002 and will be finally concluded only in 2003. In parallel with this, we were able to provide services for our members - with the European Nuclear Congress 2002 in Lille being a major event.

Co-ordination of the Nuclear Conferences Arena in Europe

Programme Committee

At the beginning of 2002, the ENS Programme Committee Chair, Gaston Meskens presented an outline for a future strategy related to ENS conference activities. After getting the green light from the ENS Board and General Assembly (GA), a small ad-hoc working group was formed with the task of translating the agreed strategic views into an action plan. This plan was presented to the ENS Board and GA during the autumn meeting of 2002. It reflects on the issues of ENS TOPical meetings and conferences for specific target audiences such as RRFM and PIME, and the way in which ENS, as a multidisciplinary-scientific organisation, can make a difference in the already overcrowded (inter)national nuclear conference world. And, last but not least, it reflects on possible formats of co-operation between ENS and national member societies, on the one hand, and ENS and relevant international organisations, on the other hand. In this respect, a standard Memorandum of Understanding between ENS and the American Nuclear Society was designed for the TOPical meeting format.

It was generally agreed by the ENS GA that ENS should not only continue to organise TOPical meetings and build further on the success story of PIME and RRFM, but in addition, should explore areas such as sustainable development, energy policy, medical and industrial applications and the transfer of know-how. In the meanwhile, as the small ad-hoc group has finished its preparatory work, the ENS Programme Committee has been extended to a more formal representational committee, acting as a discussion platform on conference matters for the member societies.

PIME 2002, a meeting of nuclear communicators, was the first event ENS organised in the year 2002. It took place in Prague at the beginning of February 2002. There were about 150 participants. In addition to “old PIMERs”, who get together every year as members of the club, there were also a number of attendees who participated for the first time. PIME is the place where public information specialists from the nuclear industry have the opportunity to exchange their results, experiences and failures. The PIME 2002 programme was carefully prepared by Mark Lloyd, who is well known for his speeches at previous PIMEs. The selection of speakers made the meeting very dynamic. There was a mix of presentations from representatives of our industry with those of several representatives from other industries and organisations. The contribution by Jamie Shea, Director of Communications from NATO, was the highlight of the event.

Following the success of the PIME 2002, by the end of the year, the preparations for PIME 2003 were well under way as that event took place early in 2003.

RRFM 2002, the 6^th International Topical Meeting on Research Reactor Fuel Management was held in Ghent, Belgium, between 17 March and 20 March 2002. It was also a success - with a surprisingly high attendance of 164 participants, and a small exhibition in which five exhibitors participated.

Even more successful was the third conference, HTR 2002, Topical Meeting High Temperature Reactor Technology, held in Petten, in the Netherlands between 22 April and 24 April 2002. There were 182 participants there.

European Nuclear Congress 2002 took place in Lille between 7 October and 9 October. This, a major ENS project in recent years, went through a number of controversial developments during its preparation. The concept of the event was redesigned several times, to finally develop into the three-day gathering of the industry, politicians and scientists. The final programme was put together by the Chairman of the Programme Committee, Wolf-Dieter Krebs. The organisational burden was shared by the outgoing secretariat team in Bern and the new secretariat in Brussels.

The first day was called The European Energy Event, featuring several keynote speakers, and having two round tables as the major events. The highlight was the afternoon debate on “Energy Consumption and Sustainable Development”, as taking part in it was a representative from the environmental movement challenging senior industry CEOs. The remaining two days of the congress were devoted to the interesting Technical Conference - with cost reduction as the main focus of presentations. In parallel, the less successful scientific seminar, with about one hundred submitted papers, was run.

An important and very visible part of the event was the exhibition, with participation by about 140 exhibitors.

Although one may judge the content of the ENC 2002 to be a success, one may not be too satisfied with the number of participants. The original target was more than 1000, but, in the end, there were only 627 people attending. The overall trend of cost reduction in all sectors of the industry is probably the major reason for that. An analysis of the event was started immediately after it and the way to go forward in the future will have to be decided in 2003.

High Scientific Council

By the end of the year the ENS High Scientific Council, under the chairmanship of Mr. Bertrand Barré, was formed and included the following distinguished members: Mr Roberto Andreani, Mr Adolf Birkhofer, Mr Leonid Bolshov, Mr Roger Clarke, Mr Frantizek Janouch, Mr William E. Lee and Mr Gérard Mégie. They were ready to have their first meeting early in 2003 and to produce their first position paper in April 2003.

Information to Our Members

The magazine, Nuclear Europe Worldscan (NEW), used to be the cornerstone of our communication with members. Ten times a year, we used to receive in our hands a colourful edition full of information. Unfortunately, 2002 was the last year NEW was published in that form. Decreasing advertising revenue forced us to end its publication. In the year 2002 we managed to publish three issues - mainly as support to European Nuclear Congress 2002.

Efforts to continue publishing NEW in some other form were initiated in spring 2002. The idea of incorporating several national magazines into a combined European edition was put forward and the first meeting of the editors of three such journals - German, French and British - took place in Lille during ENC 2002. The parties agreed that their three journals could be published jointly, with a number of pages devoted to ENS news, but the timing would not be sooner than the beginning of 2004.

Nucleus is another information service to our member societies, intended primarily for their use in informing non-nuclear people, like politicians or journalists, about the newest developments in the nuclear area. It is being translated to 11 languages and distributed in different countries around Europe. Due to the changes in our secretariat and our reduced financial capabilities, only three issues of Nucleus were prepared in the year 2002. We tried a new scheme, whereby the content was prepared by a member society and distributed only in electronic form.

Years ago, ENS established the information committee, charged with generating ideas for the society’s activity in the area of public information. Later it was observed that this issue is so broad that intensive co-operation among different institutions is needed and our information committee was converted into the Joint Information Committee, on which representatives from FORATOM also sit. The main task is to co-ordinate information activities between ENS, FORATOM and, to some extent, the World Nuclear Association, with national information activities. In the spring, ENS’ President had a thorough think-tank meeting with the chairman of JIC, Torsten Bohl. JIC then convened in September in Erlangen, where some important decisions for the future were made. One of them was the change of the name to Nuclear Information Committee Europe or NICE, the other one has resulted in the proposal for the improved information profile of ENS, which we are discussing in 2003. Together with the change of name, updated terms of reference for NICE have been created.

Young Generation Network

Young Generation Network (YGN) is one of the most important activities of ENS. We are all aware of how important young people are in our profession and, therefore, YGN has a very high priority in the overall goals of our Society. In the year 2002, YGN had members from 23 countries. They maintain connections with similar networks in North America and Asia. The Chairwoman in 2002 was Ms. Florence Avezou from France.

Unfortunately, our young generation is also feeling the pressures our industry is faced with and complain that they have less time for networking activities than in the previous years. This was coupled with the transition of the ENS secretariat, which resulted in the weaker support of YGN’s activities.

Having put a lot of effort into international high profile activities such as an active participation in the climate change conference in 2002, YGN decided to place more emphasis on national actions, using the network for an exchange of best practices.

YGN was involved in the organisation of the International Youth Nuclear Congress 2002 in Taejon, South Korea, in April 2002. It was as successful as the first meeting of its kind, in Bratislava in April 2000. ENS was, as it had been before, one of the supporting organisations. The ENS President gave a speech during the opening session, and there was a lot of involvement by European YGN members. For example, the technical programme chair position was once again held by a European representative. As it was decided from the start that the congress should try to “travel” around the world, the next one has been scheduled to take place in Canada (Toronto) in 2004.

At the European Nuclear Congress in Lille, in October 2002, YGN had an exhibition booth in the entrance hall, a YGN core meeting and a workshop on knowledge management as a part of the conference programme. This resulted in a very lively and interactive session amongst about 20 participants.

YGN members have also set themselves the goal of improving their web page, but unfortunately, because of transitions in the ENS secretariat and a lack of staff, they were not able to implement all the ideas.

Secretariat, Meetings and ENS in Belgium

The new secretariat in Brussels, shared with the industry organisation, FORATOM, was gradually taking over tasks from the team in Bern. Only two persons, Margrit Schürch and Anthony Hunter, worked for ENS in Bern in the first half of the year, and this staff was reduced to just Margrit in the second half. At the same time, Peter Haug and Gunnar Wickström were running the Society in Brussels, with occasional support from FORATOM staff.

14 June 2002 was probably the busiest day in history for ENS governing bodies. We had five different meetings altogether, during which we had to review current activities, dissolve the European Nuclear Society with the legal seat in Switzerland and establish a new one in Brussels. The day started with the ENS (Switzerland) Board Meeting in the morning and this was followed by the ENS (Switzerland) Steering Committee Meeting after lunch. After that, we had a General Assembly of the Swiss association with a single item on the agenda – the dissolution of the Society. We interrupted that General Assembly with the General Assembly of the “new” European Nuclear Society headquartered in Belgium. Only after the “new” Society was established, did the General Assembly of the “old” society continue, and the European Nuclear Society with the seat in Bern was dissolved on 31 December 2002. So, for the rest of 2002 we had two European Nuclear Societies working in parallel.

The founders of the “new” European Nuclear Society (having its legal seat in Belgium) were the following societies:

the Austrian Nuclear Society	the Israel Nuclear Society
the Belgian Nuclear Society	the Italian Nuclear Society
the British Nuclear Energy Society	the Lithuanian Nuclear Energy Association
the Croatian Nuclear Society	the Netherlands Nuclear Society
the Czech Nuclear Society	the Nuclear Society of Slovenia
the Danish Nuclear Society	the Romanian Nuclear Energy Association
the Finnish Nuclear Society	the Slovak Nuclear Society
the French Nuclear Society	the Spanish Nuclear Society
the German Nuclear Society	the Swedish Nuclear Society
the Hungarian Nuclear Society

At the General Assembly held in Bratislava, in November 2002, the following societies joined ENS:

the Polish Nuclear Society

the Nuclear Society of Russia

the Swiss Nuclear Society.

We had previously decided to make the transition as smooth as possible, and therefore, tried to keep the same composition of our governing bodies. So, I was elected President, Ms. Agneta Rising and Mr Bertrand Barre were elected Vice-Presidents, and Mr Wolf-Dieter Krebs, Mr Frank Deconinck, Mr Jiri Suchomel and Ms. Florence Avezou were elected Directors and Members of the new Board of Directors.

The final meeting of that day was the first meeting of the new Board of Directors, which appointed Mr André Versteegh as Treasurer and Mr Peter Haug as Secretary General.

Although 14 June 2002 was so busy and full of important decisions, we kept the same structure of our association, with one exception. Because of the requirements of Belgium legislation, we could not keep the Steering Committee. Instead, we decided to replace its activities with at least two meetings of General Assembly per year.

Where do we go from here?

As I said in the beginning, the year 2002 was dynamic for ENS - probably like no year before. In such a situation, it is important to establish the proper direction for the future. We, therefore, asked our member societies to answer, by the end of the year, the short questionnaire about the present and future of our association. Fifteen national societies responded and at the top of the list are the following activities:
1. Young Generation Network
2. Publication of the Nuclear Europe Worldscan
3. Network of professionals
4. ENS home page
5. High Scientific Council
6. Relationship with the EU institutions
7. European Nuclear Congress.

It is now up to us to steer the Society in the direction of these goals.

And finally, allow me, once again, to express my personal opinion that an association of enthusiastic people like ENS, joined together because of our common belief that nuclear is contributing many benefits to the everyday lives of human beings, has a very important role to play in modern open society. We must maintain our independence from politics or from the interests of capital. It is our ideas that are setting our goals and, with a little bit of enthusiasm and effort, we could achieve a lot.

Andrej Stritar
President, ENS

Ljubljana, 12 June 2003