Speaker
Tero Varjoranta
(IAEA)
Description
Good morning and a very warm welcome to everyone. My name is Tero Varjoranta, Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Safeguards, and the Chair of this Opening Plenary.
This is the twelfth international Safeguards Symposium, hosted by the IAEA. And once again it is being held in cooperation with the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management and the European Safeguards Research and Development Association. And let me take this opportunity to thank our partners for their support of this event.
Before I introduce the speakers I would like to say a few words about the symposium itself. Our theme is Strategy, Implementation and People. Linking the three core processes of any business – the strategy, its implementation and the people doing the work – determines the success or failure of every organization. And the strength of the link between these three processes determines the degree to which a business is able to deliver what it wants to achieve. The IAEA is no exception.
To achieve our vision, meet our obligations and fulfil the expectation of our Member States requires the careful and successful linking of strategy, implementation and people, and that is what we will all be focusing on during our deliberations this week.
The primary objective of this symposium is to foster dialogue and information exchange between the IAEA and experts from Member States, the nuclear industry and the broader nuclear non-proliferation community.
The global interest in this symposium has been even larger than we had anticipated. There are around 700 registered participants and around 300 oral and poster presentations have been submitted.
We are also pleased to have Non-Governmental and Inter-Governmental organizations represented. And we note the large number of vendors exhibiting their goods and services: this demonstrates the increasing importance of technologies in fulfilling our mission.
All of this increased international response clearly reflects a widespread interest in the work of the Agency and also the efforts of the symposium team to design and promote the event.
Finally, I hope you enjoy the symposium over these five days in Vienna; that you have productive discussions; and I look forward to the Agency working with all of you towards our common goals.
