 Thank you very much. Thank you. Great pleasure, great honor to be here, Julie, Madam Chancellor, Minister. We still remember your several achievements as Foreign Minister of this great nation, and it's a great honor to have met you. Gareth, of course, we go back a few years, and I will say something about the negotiations and what you personally did to give the world chemical weapons convention, and of course, the G family, I actually really did work with John for quite a while in the Hague, where I was chief of staff, and my day started very, very early in a meeting known as the flying meeting that had been established by John, where the senior staff of the OPCW will meet every morning around a table standing up, and each one of us should say what he or she was doing, and he would give us a good direction. But I actually met with him before that, when as a young diplomat negotiating the chemical weapons convention benefited enormously, and learned enormously for this guy, from the neighboring by virtue of the alphabet, Argentina, Australia, delegation, was explaining at the second row, at the second row, was explaining to the young third secretary that I was, what the hell was going on with the schedules and the chemicals and all of that. And I'm saying it is half jokingly, but he had this art of the scientist explaining how to make policy into something workable, which is quite unique, and he had it. So an honor, a real honor to remember him. And Gareth, to remember you mentioned the CWC, and I still remember one day this negotiation was long and very, very complicated. We had what we diplomats called a rolling text, so the text that we were trying to negotiate, and for each and every article of this convention, I think we had six versions, with multiple brackets, square brackets, round brackets, footnotes, et cetera. It was unreadable, until John and the Australian delegation led by the minister came, and I still remember a day-long session of the city I was sitting there somewhere. When you explained a path forward, you brought a text which was incredibly clean and so attractively looking when Australia, as always a voice for moderation, a voice for common sense, put together the elements that you believed could be accepted by all. Of course, it was not that easy, it was not going to be, and people would not accept that day that that was the CWC, but I can tell you that that was the moment where we felt we could get out of that maze of words that did not have any sense, and then we had the commissioners. Thank you for that. And back to what I'm supposed to do here, which is to give you an idea of what is going on in the area that the IAEA has amended, which is essential for international peace and security, basically nonproliferation, but much, much more. We are at a moment where by a strange convergence of geopolitical considerations and global phenomena like climate change, the appearance or reappearance of pandemics, we are again reminded of the globality of the challenges we have and how we need to work together lest these things lead to a very dark place. Nonproliferation, which is basically trying to avoid that more countries do have them now get nuclear weapons, continue to be as challenging as it used to be a few years ago. In fact, it was around the time that you were Foreign Minister, around the 80s and the 1990s that some countries started to push the envelope and circumvent the norms that they were supposed to be respecting. And this led us, of course, among other things to the findings after the First Gulf War when, to our collective dismay, we discovered that the nonproliferation regime we so loved was quite limited and was not giving us the real assurances that it should be giving us, in fact, the inspectors of the IAEA were diligently checking that Iraq was complying, of course, with the obligations set by itself in its own declaration. Of course, a few blocks from the place where the inspectors were inspecting that nothing was happening, a full blown nuclear weapon program was being developed. How about that? The international community reacted to that in trying to devise a stronger regime by giving the inspections a wider scope and allowing, when there is a reason to do that, the inspectors to go beyond what a country declares. And this was the beginning of a new process which is not fully completed because the additional protocol, which is the instrument that was brought as the name says, an additional protocol to the safeguards agreement, is not fully universal. But we are walking in that direction. You may see that still we have unresolved cases where we are struggling with the possibility that countries may move from latency to reality. One big collective failure was the DPRK, where up until 2006 North Korea did not have nuclear weapons, was approaching them and a number of initiatives including the an agreed framework that was an incentive sort of deal that would give North Korea some things including civilian nuclear reactors in exchange for them dropping their weapons program, faith. And as a consequence of that, 2006, the first nuclear weapon test to be followed by five more and everybody seems to be waiting for another one, which could take place any day. In any case, what we see is through satellite imagery is that they are preparing for that. We will see when that happens, but in any case, is a country that not so far away from you is developing considerable nuclear arsenal. Iran is of course the bread and butter of what we do in Vienna and what a tragedy it's been so for the last 20 years or so, because we failed to find a way about it. There have been ups and downs, there have been moments where it was believed that an arrangement on Modus Vivendi would be found. A good moment or a moment of hope came when a big agreement, this famous JCPOA, was signed in 2015 by the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany, but this agreement was abandoned unilaterally by the United States in 2018 and Iran, as a retaliation for that, started leaving the obligations or not observing any more, any limitation that they have until now where the JCPOA is nominally in existence, but it is an empty shell. And now we have conversations, negotiations trying to revive it, the last round of that in Doha, but unfortunately without decisive progress. We, the IEA, is working very closely, is accompanying this negotiation because of course the role of the agency is to be the guarantor, is to be the one that checks that whatever is agreed on paper actually is respected, but we are not there yet. And the issue is extremely important, not only because of the Iran's own situation, but because other countries in the region are watching closely and some have even indicated in quite the public way that they would consider themselves arming themselves nuclearly if Iran was to be seeing approaching nuclear weapons capability. So as we can see, the specter of nuclear proliferation is still reality and the work of the IEA to try to avoid this situation through international inspections continues to be indispensable. But non-proliferation is not the only, of course, area where the work of the agency is fundamental. We can refer to issues, for example, like nuclear security. Nuclear security is preventing people, especially non-state actors, from getting their hands into nuclear material for hostile purposes. This was an issue that was not paid much attention to until September 11, of course, where it became clear information, intelligence coincided in indicating that it was in the thinking of many of these groups to try to get nuclear material either to make a bomb or to disseminate panic through radiation on what is called a dirty bomb. Basically, not a nuclear weapon, but a weapon, conventional weapon that has in it elements nuclear material that can cause, of course, radiation and panic with it. Presidential summits took place for some years trying to reinforce the norm and the IEA is working constantly, hardly any day passes without us getting to know and working with governments trying to avoid smuggling of nuclear material. This occurs quite frequently, I wouldn't say almost daily, although, of course, this is not in the public eye. Nuclear safety is so important. And when I refer to nuclear safety as opposed to nuclear security, what I invite you to think is things like Chernobyl, things like Fukushima, accidents in the operation, in the normal operation of a nuclear power plant. Nuclear safety is at the center of our activities because the IEA has normative powers, is the place where you set standards on safety, how nuclear power plants should be operating. And this is fundamental for the viability of nuclear energy as a source of energy. And I'll be saying a couple of words about this in a second. So nuclear safety is so important. And it's on Fukushima, perhaps a useful segue for what I will be doing when I leave Australia, since I will be traveling on to the Pacific, to Suva, since you may know that Japan, after the accident, accumulated important amounts of water which was used to cool down their reactors. This water is there and it has to be treated and discharged and of course there is a lot of concern, even some groups here in Australia and in the islands in particular, which have a very long and heavy history related to nuclear in general, with large, because of the nuclear testing that used to occur in this region, including in this country. So for the Pacific Islanders, the issue of radiological material, the issue of the world nuclear does not evoke something nice. So I felt it was my responsibility to come here, to come to them. Never ever has the Director General of the IEA visited them, listened to them. And my intention by going there is to explain what we are doing with the government of Japan to indicate to them how we are going to be working before, during and after the discharge of water, which will be treated to a level that will not contain any radioisotope that could alter the environment. But of course there is a lot of skepticism about this. Many people, to put it in simple English, don't believe that this is going to be the case. So this is why we have to go, we have to explain and we have to be held accountable for what we are going to do. Nuclear safety and security and also nuclear weapons combined in a very unique way in the tragic circumstances that Julie you were evoking about Ukraine. I was already in Ukraine twice and I'm trying to return. After the military operations started on February 24, two things happened. Russian forces occupied the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe, Zaporizhia, where six nuclear reactors operate. And they also occupied Chernobyl, where in spite of the fact that there is no nuclear generation activity, there is a big operation led by the IEA to decommission the famous or infamous reactor number four that you know about or so in the HBO series. That place is covered under a big dome and the IEA is working there on the meticulous painstaking work of taking the material out of there while protecting the environment. These places were occupied and with a lot of anxiety in the public opinion, there were announcements about the possibility of contamination of a new Chernobyl, as some were saying it. We were able to return to the repair work, establish a good mapping of the radiation situation there, and set up a campaign of assistance in that part of the country to re-establish the safety of this important emblematic site. But we still have the unresolved situation in and around Zaporizhia. We have the peculiar, unique situation there that this place is under the control of the Russian forces, but it's still operated by the Ukraine, sorry, operators, thus creating a volatile, very tense situation which goes against common sense and every conceivable principle of nuclear safety. This nuclear power plant is not being inspected as it should be. It contains roughly 30,000 kilograms of plutonium, 40,000 kilograms of enriched uranium. So we need to go back and we are trying to do that, but of course issues that for the diplomats around here will be quite interesting, like the territorial integrity of Ukraine or the possible precedent that inspections under Russian occupation could signify have prevented me from going there. We're still negotiating, we're still trying, and we have definitely to go back to Zaporizhia. But this fresco of problems and dilemmas that we have are not all. We are also living in times of what has been rightly been described by the head of the sister organization, the International Energy Agency, not Atomic, but Energy Agency, as the world's first energy crisis. Nuclear energy is already providing more than 25% of the world's clean energy that exists today. In Europe, half of the clean energy that is produced is of nuclear origin. There is some, I say this here in Australia where there is a debate about the possibility or not of having nuclear energy, but there is some debate in the world about nuclear energy being in the decline. It's just the opposite. We are not, I would say, nuclear lobbyists. We deal with science and facts, countries and especially, and I would say special interest for Australia, particularly in Asia, are moving decisively into nuclear, much more nuclear. As we speak, China is building more than 20 reactors. India is doing the same. The Philippines has decided, for example, to go for or to revive an old nuclear power program that they have. And this, of course, in Europe, and in particular, again, harking back to this issue of the geopolitical situation, especially Eastern European countries, and you would, of course, imagine what's the reason behind this, are decisively moving to more nuclear. Since most of them had it already, but Poland, for example, which didn't have nuclear, is now moving into nuclear, but Romania, Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary, are all building more nuclear or Romania or considered France, of course, as you have heard, perhaps, is also multiplying this program. The United Kingdom as well, Belgium that had decided to phase out is slowing down because, oh, what's happening with the gas prices and what are we going to do? If we turn off nuclear power plants. The same is happening in other places in Latin America, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, continue, and some others are looking into this. This, to say, as I indicated a minute ago, nuclear energy is not the magic wand. Nuclear energy is not for all, but it's clearly playing an important role in the current energy crisis. There are interesting, very interesting new vistas when it comes to nuclear energy with the introduction of small and modular reactors. Hardly a week passes without me receiving a minister of energy from a developed country, in particular African countries, inquiring about small modular reactors and trying to see what is necessary, and the agency, of course, is going to try to help them getting the human capacity that they need to have those if they can. So, of course, this is a matter, as I was saying, that will require extreme safety measures. The IEA is there just for that. As I was saying, we are not in the commercial side of this. We are looking into the conditions that have to be fulfilled for nuclear energy to fulfill this role of helping us decarbonize the global economy, which is the real challenge we have in front of us. So, nuclear energy and its role in the current energy crisis and the efforts to decarbonize. By the way, we are now attending, which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, the COPS, the conference of the parties of the Climate Change Convention. I was there in Glasgow, and now the organizers of the next one in Egypt in Sharma Sheikh have invited us. So, again, a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable to have the director general of the IEA addressing an environmental event. Times are changing. And perhaps, finally, a note on nuclear applications that we are trying to promote. And this is also part of our mandate, one of the noblest, perhaps, when it comes to helping countries in radiotherapy, in nuclear medicine, in oncology. Last March, last February, sorry, in Africa, I launched with the president of the African Union, the president of Senegal, Race of Hope, a big project intended to give countries, especially developing countries, capabilities in radiotherapy. In Africa, today, 70% of the population don't have any access to radiotherapy. In Africa, more than 30 countries do not have a single radiotherapy unit. It is a scandal. People are dying, who should not be dying in Africa and in the rest of developing countries. And I'm very happy to say that I've been discussing with the foreign minister here about the possibility of having Australia helping us in this region also work in this area. So as you see, dear friends, the IEA is an organization that does much more than push paper. It is an organization that is there to control that there are no weapons to help countries that want to decarbonize their economies and to cure when possible. What an honor to be in this time at the helm of this organization. And what a pleasure to be talking about these things here in Australia. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Mr. Grossi. We do have some time for questions. We have a couple of microphones that it would be great if you could wait until a microphone arrives before you start your question. And as is conventional, we would like you to keep your questions short and end with a question mark. So who would like to begin? Yes, please. Thanks. In the future, do you envisage any new technologies which may enable nuclear safeguards to be done differently or better than they are now? Well, not in the future now. There is a lot of, I would say, introduction of technologies that allow us, our inspectors, to do a lot remotely. Of course, the nature of the inspection requires physical presence in many, many cases. It is, after all, an investigation, in a way. And you need the ability of the inspector to be there. But there are instruments, for example, that allow us to assert in the presence of amounts of radionuclides and nuclear material without getting into a fuel element, without getting inside a reactor, which are simply amazing. So, yes, there is a lot of evolution in that regard. And it is needed because if it wasn't the case, we would simply not be able to do the amount of inspection we have. The number, I mean, the amounts of nuclear material are growing exponentially. And with all these developments I mentioned, with the explosion of reactors in China, in India, in all these countries, we would have to grow as an international organization at pace. And, of course, this would never be possible. Even if member states would be able to pay for that, we would become a huge institution and manageable. So, indeed, we see a lot of progress there and it's happening. Yes, thank you for the question. I saw a video of you in COP talking to Gillian Tett from the economist. It was quite an interview. You saw that? Yes, brilliant. You handled it so gracefully. So, firstly, congratulations and thank you for that. But it illustrated for me the challenges in communication of facts and science within a world of sound bites and interests. So what advice would you offer to this audience of professionals and influences on the realities of nuclear energy and science-based evidence within the context of the challenges we are now facing? Well, thank you for the question. He's referring to something that happened to me in Glasgow. In Glasgow, I was having an open debate in an auditorium, quite big, a bit bigger than this one. And the Gillian Tett from, you know, when editor of the Financial Times was questioning me, and there was a question about Fukushima. And I said that no one, and I would think about what I'm going to say, and if you know it or not, I said, of course, Fukushima was a big tragedy. No one is banalizing this. It should have never happened. We know why it happened. But I said, talking about narratives, I said, in Fukushima, nobody died from nuclear radiation. You know what happened? There was a big laugh. There was a big laugh. There were a few environmental activists there, and they were laughing, you know, in a hostile way, in a defiant way. And I told them, don't laugh. What are you laughing about? About the death? About the what? And I explained the reality. I explained the sources for the information I was giving them. Of course, I'm not sure whether I convinced some, at least, of these people, but it goes to the heart of what you are saying. The narratives there are very strong. The image of nuclear energy is bad. You can say that the TG of the IAEA said it. There's the Simpsons. There is, yes, yes, the gooey green thing. And this has shaped millions of people's mentalities and approaches on it. Of course, when you have things like Chernobyl or where you have things like Fukushima, then, of course, everything makes sense for these people. So you have to strike the right balance. For me, it is a never-ending job or a never-ending effort that we have with our communications team at the agency trying to establish the facts. We know that in some cases, and this may include, for example, some of our friends in the Pacific, they will not believe it. They will think that whatever we say is not true or it's part of a conspiracy. Well, in front of that, the only thing we can do is, as the saying goes, keep cool, keep calm, and continue. Because at the end of the day, policymakers will take the right decisions on the basis of the facts. And those who do not, in the end, we see that are in a minority. And I'm not taking, in this, I say it with a lot of respect and without taking a beauty contest approach. After Fukushima, of all the countries that decide that we're talking about facing out nuclear issues, there's only one that has really done it seriously. This is Germany. But apart from that, some said it and they are not actually doing it or putting some footnotes into it so they can delay as much as they can. Right, I mean, it's politics and we have distinguished politicians here in the room and there are parliamentary majorities and elections to be won or lost. So it is one of the most important things. And I think, and may I call it that as well, because I believe and I say this to industrialists, nuclear industrialists often, and also to the IAEA itself. There has been, the nuclear world has been opaque, a bit arrogant on the edge. And it has to open and offer itself to the debate and confront the laughter with fact. Thank you. Director-General, thank you very much for your tour of the world, of the challenges and opportunities we all face. I'm very lucky to work for the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office. You know very well. Yes, I do. I wanted to pick up on one issue that you raised and the issue of human capacity. Yep. And also evidence-based policy making. In terms of the initiatives that you've put forward, and I know I is a priority for you, in terms of gender equity in the nuclear industry, can you tell us, all of us who are here today, that includes obviously people from the Australian government, but also our foreign representatives, what have you seen works the best in terms of encouraging greater gender equity in the nuclear industry? I should say that this is one of the most important things that we have in front of us in terms of the structural outlook of the industry and even academia when it comes to let alone nuclear, STEM. The statistics continue to be dismaying and only a fraction of nuclear, not nuclear, again, engineers are women every year and it is not because there is no female talent out there. There have to be an important number of changes that still need to occur. When I started as Director General, the workforce of the IAEA was 28% women and the rest men. I have it at 40 now and I promised I would get to 50% by 2025 and I told my head of human resources to get ready to have it by 2023. Why? Because it is an issue that has to do not with appointing people because of their gender, it has to do with the way we recruit, it has to do with the way we operate, it has to do also with the opportunities that women have and this is the other side. One can say for a bureaucrat it is not that difficult to appoint more women, although I can tell you it is. There is a lot of pushback when you try to do that, a lot of pushback, even lawsuits that occur. It is amazing, but it happens. What we need to do at the same time is to look at what we are really doing. The area of gender balance is an area where there is so much blah blah. It is very irritating because I am invited to events where people talk about this and what are we really doing. I established something that is relative, if anything, impact, but we are trying. We established a fellowship just for women. It is not very original here. It is called the Marie-Grie fellowship, but it is a person that inspires me, a woman that was winning Nobel Prizes when she was not even able perhaps to sit at the same table and her husband, who was quite a good guy in the end. When you look at Lisa Meitner, an Austrian who actually was the one to get nuclear fission, it is Otto Hahn who was working with her and got the best ideas from her that got the prize, but not even invited her to the ceremony. This is why I say Pierre Curie was a better guy. Still, we needed to recognize that and we created this fellowship. Australia is also helping. I am having 100 fellows per year. Women that have an opportunity to pursue high degree careers in nuclear are joining. I am sure that you would have ideas about that. We have to continue in this effort reaching out. I am working a lot with women in nuclear, women in nuclear global, and the chapters of women in nuclear nationally. But this is a problem that goes beyond, as we know, goes beyond. I have seen it. I am a father of a good number of young women, seven. I say it because they are in the professional world, and I have seen firsthand the problems that they met. Going to school, then going to college, then joining the workforce. So the task is huge, but I think that we are in the right direction. Not at the speed I would love and I would like, but moving in the right direction. And by the way, women make the best inspectors.