The discovery of a new source of energy invariably leads to major changes in society, inevitably going through a dismal stage of development as it ushers in a new era of social progress.

    Our nuclear power industry has a past and present. And like my colleagues. I feel certain that it also has a great future. Bul if that future is to carry forward what was achieved in the past, both we and everyone else who is interested in stability, justice and a climate of confidence on the planet will have to do a lot of hard work.

    History has willed that after gaining vast scope, nuclear science be associated primarily with nuclear weaponry. Yet contemporary physics sees its chief task in constructive effort for scientific and technological progress and in arriving at a proper conception of the universe as a single whole. This alone lends it a synthesis! ng and unifying character. It is my hope that as the world community discards old dogmas along with blinkers, it will increasingly appreciate the constructive achievements of this science, all that it has done in the area of nuclear power production and space exploration, microelectronics and intellectual computers, laser technology and radiation medicine, the thermonuclear power of nuclear fusion and twenty-first century technologies.

    Nuclear physics in our country came into being before the war. It owes its greatest achievements to the Leningrad Physicotechnical Institute under Academician Abram Yoffe. That was where Academicians Igot Kurcharov, Yuli Kharilon, Nikolai Semyonov, Anatoly Alexandrov entered on their career to make an invaluable contribution to scientific progress.

    A.Yoffe and his disciples as well as many other outstanding scientists - Igor Tamin, Lev Landau, Vladimir Khiopin, Andrei Tikhonov, Yevgeny Zababakhin, Alexander Samarsky, Izrail Gelfand, Andrei Bochvar, Mstislav Keldysh, Georgi Flerov, Yakov Zeidovich, David Frank-Kamenersky, Isaak Kikoyin, Lev Artsimovich - formed the backbone of the team that solved the problem of the atom bomb and peaceful uses of nuclear power.

    The early steps in this direction were taken in 1943, when the government responded to information presented by the German physicist Klaus-Fuchs by naming Igor Kurchatov head of the first nuclear research centre, the Academy of Sciences Laboratory of Measuring Instruments (LIPAN). In 1993 the Russian Research Centre-Kurchatov Institute, founded by Igor Kurchatov and Anatoly Alexandrev, marked its fiftieth anniversary. August 1945 saw the establishment of an interdepartmental agency for the coordination of nuclear research, the First Chief Directorate under the USSR Council of Ministers. As early as December 1946, the Moscow Kurchatov Institute, now known as the Russian Research Centre, put in operation the first reactor on the European continent with a controlled chain reaction of uranium nuclei fission.

    The task was far from easy for a country which had lived through World War II, the worst armed conflict in its history. In carrying forward fundamental research, we had to concentrate on a field as decisive for technological progress as physics while at the same time solving urgent defence problems. This lent the new industry in the making a character at once closed and uniquely comprehensive.

    In prewar years and even in the difficult post-war period, our country held a prominent position in the world thanks to achievements in a number of fields of fundamental physics and mathematics. The government's traditional policy of full support for fundamental research bore fruit. It made possible the establishment of first-class research centres such as the Radium Institute of the Academy of Sciences in Leningrad founded by Vladimir Vernadsky, Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, Kharkov Physicotechnical Institute, Chemical Institute in Leningrad, Institute of Chemical Physics in Moscow. Our ability to concentrate vast material and manpower resources on the main lines of scientific and technological progress made it possible to set up a new industry and achieve a breakthrough in science and technology.

    The country proved equal to bringing into being several new, highly sophisticated production systems in a very short time. V. Malyshev, A. Zavenyagin, B. Vannikov, P. Zemov, B. Muznukov, Y. Slavsky, N. Dukhov, D. Vassilyev, K. Shchelkin, V. Alferov and many other prominent organisers and engineers put much energy and skill into setting up the new industry. You cannot help wondering as you look back what made physicists, designers and organisers of renown work with abnegation late into the night I think they did so primarily out of love of their country, true patriotism and a natural desire to prove their worth. It is such a combination of national and personal interests that helps contribute to universal values irrespective of the period and geography.

    On 19 August 1949 at a test site near Semipalatinsk, the Soviet Union carried out its first experimental nuclear explosion, and in the early 1950s it made a thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, in whose development Andrei Sakharov played the leading role.

    Those achievement were of extraordinary importance for national security and global stability. But the appearance of such a qualitatively new, potentially destructive weapon marked something more than a new stage in the evolution of humanity. It also created a number of big philosophical and ideological problems. The responsibility of politicians and the nations led by them for the very existence of life on earth underwent a qualitative change.

    I think it is now important not to lose what has been achieved. In taking away bits of the Berlin Wall as souvenirs and building up the Commonwealth of Independent States, it is essential not to upset the military-political and defence technology balance on which the solid edifice of the postwar world was raised. It was an edifice that withheld the shock of the Caribbean crisis and prevented a new world war. The Warsaw military-political alliance has fallen apart but other alliances, NATO included, now tend to expand, 'opposing' their right to shape the fortunes of whole regions to the UN's. The military-political map of the twenty-first century world is only just being drawn, and there is a natural aspiration on the part of some countries and alignments to revise the spheres of influence of strategic interests and determine the destiny of all humanity. Besides, the tendency of some peoples to establish independent democratic states on the basis of ethnic interests, a common ethnic will and common religion pave the way for a revision of postwar boundaries. What the next century will be like depends on everyone of us.

    Today even terms like 'global country' and 'regional country' have gained currency. But the peoples of the planet cannot be divided into global and regional ones, as the history of civilisation shows.

    I wish to repeat that nuclear weapons today are primarily a means of maintaining global political, military and economic stability on Earth irrespective of whether there is a face-off in any field between countries possessing them. The only alternative to the nuclear balance is a climate of full mutual confidence, complete openness, a universal and complete ban on nuclear weapons and research aimed at developing them, the dissolution of military-political blocs. But this is the ultimate goal, which will take countries much effort to reach while keeping reasonable quantities of nuclear military technological means of ensuring stability.

    What should be singled out from the practical point of view are, to my thinking, those types of nuclear weapons which are more likely than any other to provoke aggressiveness, a desire to use them in armed conflicts, including local ones. It is these redundant, politically obsolete and provocatively dangerous types of nuclear weapons that must be renounced to begin with.

    However we live in a complicated and dynamic world and it is therefore important to keep the 'stablest' strategic weapons systems, so to speak, or those that are easiest to monitor and forecast.

    The large cuts in nuclear arsenals undertaken by Russia and the United States are another fundamental peculiarity of the outgoing century. This is a really welcome development, for we weapons specialists have long been aware that the stockpile of nuclear weapons was too large. Still the pace and technicalities of nuclear disarmament should be approached soberly and realistically. Undue haste and incompetence could prove harmful.

    The problem of reducing nuclear arsenals acquired exceptional significance when, with the establishment of the CIS, another three nuclear weapon powers entered the scene.

    Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus found themselves in a particularly dramatic situation following an unprecedented anti-nuclear campaign in all three republics, where there are strategic nuclear armaments and in Kazakhstan and Ukraine nuclear power plants (NPPs). These countries' industrial and scientific potential prevents them from ensuring their security, dismantling their nuclear weapons or keeping the operation of NPPs safe without help whereas these, as is 'now' apparent, are so indispensable for economic stabilisation.

    Attempts to look to the West for help solved none of these problems, for the dismantling of only one nuclear warhead costs about $100,000. Besides, no sensible politician would allow foreign nuclear arsenals to be hauled to and dismantled in his country. As regards the nuclear power industry, decommissioning of NPPs, let alone replacing them by alternative sources of power, would cost tens of billions of dollars.

    Russia, which has inherited from the Union Ministry of Medium Machine Building about 80 per cent of the industrial potential and the entire nuclear weapons complex, can cope with all these problems but this calls for goodwill, genuine patriotism and appreciation of the common interests of the Commonwealth countries, which history itself has closely linked together by cultural scientific and economic bonds.

    Currently we spend up to an annual 1,000 billion rubles on dismantling nuclear weapons. This is a most exacting technological process, especially in view of the political and economic instability affecting the state. To enlarge the scope of dismantling nuclear weapons in these circumstances is an extremely demanding task for Russia, for it entails large investments, and all 'dividends' from dismantling are out of the question today. As for the agreement with the United States on utilising weapons-grade uranium during twenty years in order to use these fissionable materials as fuel for NPPs, it is a question of partial compensation for the cost of dismantling nuclear armouries which we already bear now. But in this case, too, Russia realises the difficulties encountered by CIS countries on the transitional period.

    This is a job for the entire nuclear weapons complex of the Russian Ministry for Nuclear Power which is itself in particularly bad financial straits.

    Incidentally, where are the zealots of nuclear disarmament who complained of the 'hawks' and 'blind eagles' of the nuclear complex? Why don't they come out in favour of solving practical problems such as investment and the pay of professionals who are doing all this work in complicated social and living conditions? This is also the situation surrounding the utilisation of industrial waste from the nuclear fuel cycle and the rehabilitation of polluted areas. It looks as if they have solved their political problems by realising their ambition to win a solid position - this was what made them speak up in public, not concern about the state of the environment. Today our whole society knows the worth of their fine speeches.

    Today the country's nuclear weapons complex employs over 100,000 people. It is based on two major Federal nuclear weapons centres - in Arzamas-16 and Chelyabinsk-70 (on Lake Sinara, Chelyabinsk Region).

    The oldest centre is the All-Russia Research Institute of Experimental Physics in Arzamas-16. Incidentally, the locality - Sarov - is also known as a religious site, for it was in the Sarov Hermitage, a major monastery, that St Seraphim of Sarov lived at the turn of the nineteenth century. Early this century. Emperor Nicholas II travelled to Sarov with his consort to pray to God for the birth of an heir. The latter's birth a year later enhanced the popularity of the hermitage.

    Alas, no miracles occur today. The wear and tear of the fixed assets of the weapons complex exceeds 50 per cent. Potentially unsafe production facilities are located all over Russia. It should be clear even to laymen that we need large-scale modernisation to make this complex compact and modem, which also means dismantling and utilising nuclear weapons, tasks whose magnitude was hard to foresee before the restructuring campaign. I can give the reader an idea of it by noting that the US Department of Energy is planning to modernise and replenish a similar complex within the next twenty to twenty-five years with due regard for today's requirements for the protection of personnel health and the environment. Needless to say, the bill will be footed primarily by the state. Russia ought to follow America's example but the approach here is different. I am sorry to say. I would therefore like to stress again that undue haste and incompetence in this matter would be harmful and, indeed, dangerous.

    What makes the situation difficult are not only the problems of the nuclear weapons industry I have listed. The whole Russian nuclear complex is now wrestling with problems. How inevitable is this? I think we are witnessing something illogical and irrational, for our powerful facilities often falter or operate below capacity not only because we are short of current assets and investments but owing to our hasty attempts to fully introduce market relations without providing an appropriate legal basis for them.

    We set up a record time a unique industry accumulating the advanced scientific and technological thought. Teams of scientists, designers, production engineers and workers linked into one technological system have always been an earnest of success, whose basis is a single technological process and tens of thousands of industrial standards adding up to a scientific whole that cements creative effort. The industry achieves success thanks to the programme directed method of planning scientific and technological development, the purpose oriented method of management, the natural monopoly of most research projects and production systems, with competition lowered to enterprise level inside the complex. You cannot sever a part of this complex -not even construction and assembly organisations - overnight without its dropping out of the further development of the nuclear power industry. It will take a lot of time to raise efficiency in the new economic conditions, which also necessitate relevant legislation and the adoption of bylaws and standards to ensure the dependable and safe functioning of every component of the complex.

    Many enterprises and technologies indispensable for society and state cannot yield direct commercial results. Yet other, perfectly profitable, economic structures need them for their own normal operation. It is important here to set up major industrial-financial groups that would use a system of licensing extending from managers to shop foremen, heads of shifts and others. This requires time and high competence throughout the technological cycle - it is not enough to want it done 'by tomorrow morning'. I think the way to success in adopting a new economic system, in bringing into being major market structures of producers of commodities that can compete in the world market where monopoly producers have long ceased to operate, lies in a reasonable combination of vertical control with horizontal links between enterprises on a new legislative basis and according to the strategy of 'moving upwards' in setting up industrial-financial groups.

    The economy should follow an evolutionary path, not a revolutionary one. As for the latter, we have already tried it.

    What the country needs first of all is to provide a basis for market relations - a free market on which producers of commodities and services can meet our people's social and everyday requirements. And it is this socially-orientated, free market that should pave the way for and condition the development of a high technologies market, a market of scientific and technological progress.

    That world market of high technologies exists but ever since Cold War days we have faced roadblocks that we overcome vith difficulty. The problem is simpler with regard to developing countries, which are drawn to high technologies, but it is compounded by big politics.

    It is necessary to explicitly define economic and political benefit as a priority in addressing long-term political tasks and problems posed by the need to prevent proliferation of nuclear technologies by strengthening safeguards of international agencies of the UN.

    Currently our whole industry is being held hostage by the banking system and exchange market, both of which are rapidly integrating into the world market under the aegis of leading world banks, using our natural resources as a security. Domestic producers are up against a powerful one-way flow of goods from the West, which has badly undermined the prestige of the ruble. Tlicy can no longer compete with Western producers; what is mure, they are shackled by nonpayments and broken up into pieces by an anti-monopoly campaign and are looking for sponsors cap in hand. The price we have had to pay for this is export of natural resources and raw materials that is difficult to control. The government system of controlling and regulating taxes and tariffs should be our producers' 'sponsor'. In these circumstances it is only enterprises of the former military-industrial complex that can hold their own against Western technologies. But conversion requires time and investment.

    I have said that our industry has been a closed shop from the first. This has made it comprehensive and universal. And then there is its strong dependence on the budget.

    This had its merits and demerits. The industry is becoming less and less closed, and we welcome this trend. But it must retain its comprehensive character, integrated and purpose-oriented system of control and access to large budget appropriations. The Russian Ministry for Nuclear Power is one of the wholly autonomous components of a system. Such components should not be eliminated but modernised because as exponents of progressive thought and technology, they have a highly stimulating effect on scientific and technological progress in all industries. Because of the difficulties of our social and political existence, we fail to notice that we are surrounded by practical results of this century's scientific and technological achievements. But what are we going to leave to our children and grandchildren? Why, developing countries will just 'swallow' us unless we preserve and increase our potential.

    Our ministry was formally established in 1953 as the USSR Ministry of Medium Machine-Building. In 1989, it was transformed into the Ministry of Nuclear Power Development and Industry, and since 1992 it has existed as the RF Ministry for Nuclear Power controlling the industry through functional units.

    The ministry comprises dozens of major research and design institutes, hundreds of up-to-date extractive, processing, engineering and instrument-making plants, enterprises of the nuclear power complex and well-equipped and properly staffed construction and assembly organisations.

    The Ministry for Nuclear Power is in charge of all NPPs on Russian soil, their design and construction and since the Chemobyl accident it has also been responsible for their operation. Sectoral science largely underlies the country's fundamental science, with large research centres characterised by multiple-discipline specialisation. These conduct extensive theoretical and applied research in such areas as nuclear physics, high-energy and superconductivity physics, nuclear power development, thermonuclear fusion, electronics, instrument making, automation, materials technology, advanced technologies, and mechanical engineering.

    The complex is experiencing difficulties today, for new developments interlock with crisis trend, and while some enterprises make good, others are in trouble. But this is not what I am concerned about at the moment. The only reason for my raising this subject is to ponder a little on the possibility and expediency of attracting foreign investments to the Russian nuclear industry from countries that have long ago formed a market of scientific and technological progress and advanced technologies.

    I am of the opinion that along with large investments from domestic sources, our participation in the market of high technologies and scientific and technical progress with the aid of foreign investments on a reasonable and mutually beneficial scale would benefit both sides. We have something to show and sell. And of course there are things we would like to buy. In some cases it may be right to bring foreign investments into research being done at the ministry's enterprises and research centres on the understanding that subsequently they will be used in common. This brings us even now about $80 million in additional funding for scientific and technological research each year. I will come back to prospects for and likely lines of cooperation later. At this point I wish to remark that it is no use complaining of difficulties and that we had better look ahead without forgetting to watch our step.

    As far as the future is concerned, we are fated to cooperate with our planetary partners extensively and on an equal footing.

    The global potential of our industry is exemplified by the All-Russia Institute of Experimental Physics, our oldest weaponry centre in Arzamas-16. A few years ago it was so closely guarded a secret that the very name of the 'nuclear' town was missing from maps published for the general public. The green on those maps marked the forests of the Mordovian Reserve.

    By now the institute, that has been named the Federal Nuclear Centre not long ago, has welcomed dozens of delegations from the United States, Britain, Germany, China, France, Norway and elsewhere. Many of our specialists, including weapons specialists who are carrying on, travel to these and other countries to join in symposiums, conferences, talks. We sign agreements on joint R&D. Last January Arzamas-16 hosted a third Russian-American symposium on the transportation safety of hazardous freight, including freight containing radioactive materials. The first such symposium took place in Chelyabinsk-70 and the second in Albuquerque, USA, in 1993. Nor is this the only instance of joint discussion of very delicate problems.

    Another instance of international cooperation in nuclear disarmament is the Nunn-Lugar Act passed in the United States - it authorises the allocation of funds to help Russia and other CIS countries dismantle weapons of mass destruction, ensure their safe transportation, storage and guarding in the process of elimination and adopt measures needed to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation. This ministry alone has signed and is implementing eight working agreements. The US initiative has also been supported by France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Japan.

    Not long ago, the very idea of anything like this would not have crossed anybody's mind on either side. No one could have dreamed of it. Yet it emerged that common ground can be found for a substantive discussion of even so sensitive a sphere of national interests as the security of nuclear armaments, to say nothing of cooperation in fundamental and applied research for peaceful purposes. Our scientists have always realised the need for such cooperation in promoting world science.

    As far back as 1956, we set up the United Nuclear Research Institute in Dubna as a window on peaceful uses of nuclear power. The institute has hosted such outstanding scientists as Niels Bohr of Denmark, Glenn Seaborg of the United States, Frederic Joliot-Curie of France. Surely this is a sign of international recognition of our achievements in physics.

    In 1963, an Institute of High-Energy Physics was founded near Serpukhov, Moscow Region, on Academician Anatoly Logunov's initiative to do research into elementary particles on up-to-date super-powerful accelerators. This led to the rise of Protvino, a fine town. Ever since it came into being, the institute has been cooperating extensively with French, Italian and American scientists and with the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN).

    The Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics founded by Academician Abram Alikhanov in 1945 has become a centre for research on the physics of a nucleus and elementary particles, for the development of new accelerators and reactor technology and the use of beams of charged particles in medicine.

    International cooperation in science, technology and business is an area of human relations pioneered by our country long ago. Nevertheless, the fact that once-closed organisations and institutes of the Ministry for Nuclear Power are now joining in them to a much greater degree than before is creating a situation entirely new both quantitatively and qualitatively.

    Missing from the map of world technological progress were whole 'continents' of scientific and engineering thought, industrial achievements and great opportunities. Not until we have filled all these gaps will we be entitled to join the world community as full-fledged members. This is a look into the future.

    Nor can it be otherwise, for every major undertaking naturally makes for reciprocal attraction and is international by its very nature. This is particularly important in the context of the ongoing large-scale conversion of the nuclear weapons complex.

    Cooperation in science, technology and trade with leading countries of the world is just indispensable. Establishing joint ventures of producers of scientific, technological and industrial products is the basis on which we can keep our highly skilled specialists and achieve more on the world market of high technologies. There is much scope for this kind of cooperation ranging from a search for new principles, architectures and a new data-element base for high-capacity computer systems for simulation of the micro- and macrocosm, from joint use of unique systems that simulate X-ray, alpha, beta, gamma and laser radiation to impart new physical, chemical and mechanical properties to materials and substances and to serve medical purposes in the field of radiation medicine, radionuclide diagnostics and radiation therapy, gamma and neu-trongraphy as well as tomography, to producing up-to-date equipment, diagnostic instruments and information systems using new technologies based on application of superpower electromagnetic fields and ultra-pure materials, extensive use of directed energy of chemical explosives, superhigh pressures and temperatures. All this and much else are feasible thanks to the industry's intellectual potential. And intellect is invaluable indeed.

    In July 1956, work began in the Leningrad Admiralty Shipyard to build the world's first nuclear-powered icebreaker, Lenin. Four years later the icebreaker started regular runs on the Northern Sea Route. Achievements of our nuclear industry include the development of the Arctic and the Northern Sea Route. Nuclear-powered icebreakers have made possible navigation in the western part of the Arctic all the year round. The historic voyages to the North Pole made by the nuclear-powered icebreakers Arktika and Sibir in 1977 and 1987 were a daring feat, for the development of the Arctic Sea route was only just getting off to a start.

    The container carrier Sevmorput, the first freighter to use nuclear fuel, offers unprecedented opportunities for shipping along routes that nature itself has laid for us.

    Conversion of the main builders of our nuclear-powered submarine fleet today is aimed at developing small and medium capacity nuclear power systems. The signal achievements of our industry in the area of transport units make it possible to cooperate extensively in this budding field of nuclear power production for peaceful purposes.

    Conversion of the main builders of our nuclear-powered submarine fleet today is aimed at developing small and medium capacity nuclear power systems. The signal achievements of our industry in the area of transport units make it possible to cooperate extensively in this budding field of nuclear power production for peaceful purposes.

    Or take the development of space technologies. It is still in its infancy. Russia has an appreciable record of building spaceships using nuclear sources of electricity and nuclear engines. Cooperation in this sphere gives humanity a chance to develop new, twenty-first century technologies in space, protecting the planet's biota from the harmful impact of scientific and technological progress.

    The Russian Ministry for Nuclear Power, which commands a powerful scientific and technological potential and large research and production centres staffed by highly competent scientists and specialists, has been engaged in extensive bilateral and multilateral cooperation for more than thirty years now.

    Today we have intergovernmental and interdepartmental agreements and protocols on cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear power with the United States, China, Germany, Britain, Japan, France, Sweden, Finland and other countries. We have also signed several agreements with East European and developing countries.

    This cooperation covers diverse sectors and current problems of nuclear technology, research aimed at developing various types of nuclear reactors, on the nuclear fuel cycle and management of radioactive waste, fundamental research on high-energy physics and nuclear physics, solution of problems of plasma physics and controlled thermonuclear fusion. Our chief purpose is to put this cooperation on an economic basis by using the new Russia'! ample potentialities.

    A highly important line of multilateral cooperation is Russia's participation in the work of the IAEA, in programmes for the advancement of nuclear power production and the safe operation of NPPs, in ensuring nuclear weapons nonproliferation, in nuclear exports and imports, in the provision of stronger IAEA safeguards for control over and registration of nuclear materials.

    A further instance of multilateral cooperation is that Russian scientists and specialists participate in the development of a technical design for an international thermonuclear reactor under an agreement signed by the European Union and the Russian, US and Japanese governments (ITER programme).

    Disarmament processes, primarily in the nuclear field, have resulted in switching a considerable scientific and technological potential from military to peaceful fields of activity in order to solve major economic problems.

    To continue to the solution of these problems at international level, Russia, America, Japan and the European Union have set up an International Scientific and Technological Centre in Moscow. The governments of Canada, Sweden and Switzerland have informed the centre of their wish to join its activity.

    Developing nuclear power production for peaceful purposes is a major line of our work. The twentieth century is certain to go down in history thanks to great discoveries and the development of nuclear power production.

    One nuclear power industry will be forty years old this year. On 27 June 1954, the first atomic power plant in the world went into operation in Obninsk, near Moscow, which means that we are also going to mark the fortieth anniversary of the birth of world nuclear power production. The word 'atom' became a symbol of creative effort in Obninsk. The town of the peaceful atom, the cradle of nuclear power production, lies in the heart of Russia, at the site of the one-time village of Turliki known since the seventeenth century. The first atomic power plant in the world was built in less than three years at the Physicoengineering Institute which became the core of the town of Obninsk. The first atomic power plant also became an experimental base for new scientific and technological solutions in the nuclear power industry. On the initiative of Alexander Leipunsky and Dmitry Plokhintsev, eminent scientists who headed the institute, it started research into nuclear reactors on fast neutrons, a field in which our country holds a leading position.

    Nuclear power units, which now number over 400 in the world, account for 17 per cent of world output of electric power and for 30 per cent in Europe which has 218 nuclear power units and another 31 units under construction. In some developed countries the share of NPPs in the production of electric power is from 50 to 80 per cent.

    We know much about the economic 'miracle' accomplished by Japan, France, Germany and South Korea after World War II. They largely owed it to making industrial use of nuclear power and to build NPPs in a short time on the basis of wide ranging cooperation.

    Russia has 29 nuclear units generating 12 per cent of its electricity; those operating in its European part produce about 30 per cent.

    Today nuclear reactors are a source of heat and electricity and, furthermore, make it possible to reproduce nuclear and thermonuclear fuels, synthesise artificial elements, modify substances with a view to lending them the necessary properties, produce radioactive isotopes for medicine. All this predetermines the outlook for electronics, medicine, metalworking and much else - in short, scientific and technological progress.

    The past forty years have seen something besides achievements. The Chernobyl disaster and the ensuing crisis became a cruel test for many of our contemporaries and the very idea of using nuclear power as a source of heat and electric power. Advocates of a ban on nuclear power production escalated their campaign, and even in the twentieth century a new science is under attack from inquisitors as in various earlier periods of transition involving qualitative changes of production activity. But what prompts today's inquisitors to act is not a bid to confiscate the property of individuals accused by them but the immense scientific and technological assets of a whole country, Russia.

    Advocates of a ban on nuclear power production today are backed by a powerful lobby of the fabulous finance capital of coal-, gas- and oil- producing and processing companies.

    Research done in Russia and abroad shows that various alternative sources of energy can be used only on a limited scale (if the heat and water balance of the planet in some limited areas is not to be upset). Added to this are fears about the greenhouse effect and the destruction of the ozone layer under the impact of emissions of organic fuel combustion products into the atmosphere. And what about the 'eating up' of oxygen, that source of life on the planet, in the process of combustion? It follows that humanity cannot do without nuclear power resources using the colossal energy generated by the division of heavy into lighter nuclei. The only arguable point is scale, rate and profitableness, which should be coupled with measures to ensure nuclear power engineering safety, measures for safe utilisation of waste from NPPs and measures to conserve the natural radiation background on the planet as a decisive factor for the development of the biota.

    It should be admitted that every source of energy poses definite risks and has its merits and demerits.

    Designing a new generation of nuclear electric power and heating plants is based on their natural safety, which rules out the possibility of an uncontrolled chain reaction of nuclei fission, on a closed fuel cycle complete with a safe system of neutralising waste, including reactors on slow and fast neutrons employing the uranium-thorium cycle.

    Currently we see an additional source of investment in this field in increased exports of nuclear power equipment and fuel for NPPs, including investments derived from the utilisation of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, exports of rare-earth elements, high-energy fertilisers, medicinal isotopes, machinery and instruments, as a means of encouraging a search for solutions to problems of the safety and dependability of nuclear technologies. Next year we plan to increase exports to one billion dollars.

    In our uranium production for export today we already have high added value thanks to the use of up-to-date technologies. I think, however, that setting out to export electric power from NPPs holds an even bigger promise, especially if we build up-to-date nuclear power plants. Also very promising are our technologies of underground drilling out and leaching in mining uranium, precious metals and stones, technologies that are only just finding their way to the world market.

    It is safe to say that using the economic and ecological advantages of nuclear power calls for close international cooperation including the world market and mutual support for national programmes. I think this area of scientific and business cooperation offers unlimited opportunities.

    Increasing safety of the NPPs that are in operation in Russia with the participation of the world's leading states has become a new and most important aspect of cooperation. Russia has established cooperation in this field with the United States, Japan, Britain and Germany. We now have an agreed, entirely new, so-called 'station' approach to the programme for technical aid to Russia in increasing the safety of its NPPs. The programme was launched within the framework of the 1992 budget of the EU Commission. The 'station approach' envisages the realisation of projects at the Kalinin, Balakovo, Kola, Smolensk, Leningrad and Bely Yar NPPs under our programmes for increased safety at these plans.

    This cooperation is based on mutual benefit, with Russia giving its partners access to up-to-date nuclear power technologies.

    We have worked out projects for high- and low-capacity nuclear power plants that provide natural safety by localising fission products inside the reactor unit in any emergency situation. The projects have been subjected to the most painstaking expert analysis by international specialists. Our plans for the future include socalled hybrid nuclear power plants where an external source of penetrating particles will set off nuclei fission and combine with the chain reaction of fission of subcritical masses of fissionable materials, with a spontaneous chain reaction of nuclei fission ruled out in principle. Afterwards there should come the energy of thermonuclear fusion of light nuclei.

    Implementation of the programme for developing the nuclear power industry in Russia hinges directly on economic stabilisation in the country. At the same time, a stable nuclear power complex is an important factor for economic stabilisation.

    Nuclear power development in the twenty-first century should be based on joining together the efforts of advanced countries with due regard to the interests of all developing countries. To cut the cost of developing and building NPPs and nuclear district heating plants, the nuclear power industry should work out standard designs of reactor systems of the next century based on the modular unit principle of their construction. We are prepared to engage in such joint international projects and are looking forward to reciprocal moves.

    Development of nuclear power production in all countries as a pillar of scientific and technological progress that will also serve future generations is leading our planet to a new conception of peaceful cooperation, to a world without local wars or conflicts.

    Organic fuel, that great asset of our green planet, must not be burned in furnaces but preserved to be used more wisely and rationally by posterity. And every effort must be made to ensure that satisfaction of the present generation's requirements for energy does not damage the chances of future generations for progress.

    The Russian nuclear power industry came into being and made headway in difficult historical conditions. But we have only to list some of its achievements to show their epoch-making significance: nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, nuclear power production, powerful accelerators of elementary particles, space and naval power systems, an icebreaking nuclear-powered fleet, metallurgy and production of precious and rare-earth metals, ultra-pure materials and alloys, etc. without which advanced countries could not have made the impressive progress in technology in both technological standards and technological potentialities. Nor could they have built the industrial potential that is in evidence today.

    Still, the most valuable asset acquired by our nuclear scientists over nearly half a century is, first, reliably guaranteed national sovereignty and, a direct result of it, global stability and second, our Ministry of Medium Machine-Building, once known to very few, our nuclear power industry and its highly competent and technologically disciplined specialists, without whom there would have been no breakthrough in science leading to signal achievements.

    This asset, like everything else that humanity has achieved in its global forward movement, belongs to the world, not just the peoples of Russia. It is one of the universal assets owned by individual peoples but belonging to humanity advancing to a prosperous future.

    Looking ahead as we solve today's problems, we hope for increasing awareness of what benefits us all, for further efforts towards it by our country, for growing international cooperation on an equal footing and in everyone's interest.