Members of EUROfusion General Assembly,
Representatives of European Commission,
Principal Investigators, ladies and gentlemen,
I am pleased to welcome you today to this twenty sixth EUROfusion General Assembly meeting! For the first time it is held in Latvia and I am proud of Latvian contribution to the program.
Starting my activity as President of Latvia, I have chosen to do my utmost to help our state to find its way in the processes of globalisation, bringing a lot of challenges. We are dealing with a world concerned with sustainable development, where a lot of people will be confronted with numerous professions disappearing as a result of an irreversible progress of technology where Artificial intelligence and smart solutions are playing a tremendous role.
Those smart solutions, including the transition to G5, will need more and more energy, but world resources are limited and fossil energy reserves are due to vanish.
It is clear that for any nation the human capital and new energy solutions will be to main issues.
Fusion is the process that powers the Sun - the largest reactor of nuclear synthesis - it is fusion energy that makes life on Earth possible.
Fusion energy is safe, it leaves low physical footprint. Nuclear fusion reactors have significantly lower amounts of radioactive material than fission reactors, limiting then the risk of radioactive contamination of the environment. And the operation of nuclear fusion reactors does not result in carbon dioxide or other releases of harmful substances.
There is abundant availability of needed fuel- tritium and deuterium. Acquiring fusion energy can give humanity an unlimited source of energy.
Currently, many countries in the world, including Member States of the European Union, are developing nuclear fusion reactors. However, nuclear fusion reactors, still in the exploration phase, will not contribute to the carbon dioxide transition by 2050 - its potential is to deliver an important part of the world’s energy need by the end of the century.
It is our common goal to solve climate change issues and ensure safe, sustainable existence of the mankind on Earth. For decades Latvian scientists are motivated to contribute their time, knowledge and other resources to this mission.
In EUROfusion program our teams from the Institute of Solid State Physics, Institute of Chemical Physics and Institute of Physics, the University of Latvia, will develop advanced, structural and diagnostic materials for fusion application. We feel honoured to collaborate daily with some of the best institutes in the field of fusion in the Europe, for example, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany), CEIT-IK4 (Spain), Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Italy), Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (United Kingdom), as well as Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (Germany). Again, I welcome all of you here!
We truly believe in the importance of fundamental research evolving with time in cross-disciplinary, cross-sectoral and cross-actor innovation. I personally see science as one of Latvian priorities of and wish that this work will continue in this project as well as in countless other important projects. Only together we can make sure the future will bring us a sustainable and clean planet for our descendants.
I wish you all patience and success on our common way to fusion electricity!
Thank you.