It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you to this IAEA Symposium on Desalination of Seawater with Nuclear Energy. I should like also warmly to thank the Government of the Republic of Korea and the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute for their substantial support. Let me also state at the outset my personal conviction that nuclear energy will come to be increasingly used in the future to desalinate water for drinking. Water is essential to life and to civilization.
Fresh water is a precondition for human life and industrial development.
However, economic development and population growth is today jeopardizing the adequacy of potable water resources in many regions of the world. Increased pollution and salinity of the natural fresh water resources are worsening the problem. Slowing the growth of the world population is one necessity. Let me give you some staggering figures to illustrate where our successful species has been moving - with dizzying speed. Thus in the last 10 years of this century the world's population will increase by almost as much as it did in the first 1900 years from the birth of Christ.