 Now as I have commented in years past I struggle with preparing remarks for this conference And I've tried to explain to people why it's difficult and they don't it's counterintuitive. I acknowledge but Because the topic area is so general It's actually a little bit more daunting at many of the technical conferences that I appear I'm assigned a much narrower topic and I think it's easier to assess what would be of use to the audience because there's a much Clear technical purpose for which they've gathered. So I must say this is This is my sixth Rick speech. I know if you're doing the mathematics Eric just stated that I came in March of 2008 But I really didn't want to get sworn in and two days later. I have to give a Rick speech So I waited I think very wisely until the end of the month to be arrived as an NRC commissioner, so I Was thinking creatively to myself that if the difficulty that I had this year is any gauge If I get up to Rick speeches like eight nine and ten I Was joking with myself of you know, what possibly could I do? And I was thinking I could maybe play the violin or I could do an interpretive dance of the 10 CFR That was the thought I had Neither of which or it could be an interpretive dance to Commissioner Apostol Alakaz's favorite new reg we could ask him what new reg he would like interpreted through movement But none none none of those things would be very pretty so I hope it doesn't come to that now I'm I'm told that Commissioner McGaffigan Perhaps as he progressed through the later years of his service on the commission And he was the longest serving member of the Commission if I have the history, right? He would sometimes pen his remarks for this conference on a notepad as he sat Listening to the presenters who came before him and and people who know us both have made comparisons between our work styles Which is very flattering to me and probably for a profound injustice to Commissioner McGaffigan But I really would just lack that would that's a very nervy thing to be able to go I'm just gonna write some notes down and go up there. I wish you all could see the view from up here It is really impressive to have this many of you come these distances to be a part of this conference But so I cut it a little bit close this year. I'm not all the way to the McGaffigan style I wasn't penning it as Allison was talking earlier, but I Hate do and have had all my life a little bit of a difficulty with Procrastination I do maybe I'm people who procrastinate say I'm just one of those people, you know Really, I'm good in under the crunch time and in a pressure cooker, but one of my favorite monologues about Procrastination came from the comedian Ellen DeGeneres and I've talked about her humor other times I think she's Really got a wonderful sense of humor, but she described in a stand-up act She had one time about that feeling you get when you sit at your computer you know you need to work on a writing a creative work product and The sudden Irresistible urge you feel to do things like alphabetizing your compact discs or You know then you Decides you're gonna go downstairs for a little bit So you encounter your cat on the staircase and then your cat Leans over and wants to bed belly rub and so you do that in about 45 minutes later then you go downstairs and You know then you go while I'm okay. I am getting a drink of water. I'm gonna get back at it I'm going right up there and getting back on the computer and you you have that drink of water You have the drink of water and you're you're in your kitchen And you look around and you go I need to paint this kitchen So I didn't paint the kitchen on Sunday But let me I want to give you some flavor of the things I felt compelled to do on Sunday While I was really serious about preparing these remarks I have lived in my current home for over 12 years now on Sunday. This is a true story I'm giving you a real feeling for for my issue with procrastination I felt compelled to take some wall hangings and decorative items that I have for 12 years not had the commitment To place and hang on the wall in the various locations where they go. I hung them on Sunday And this I think those stands is a seminal act of procrastination if there were a hall of fame of Procrastinators I would put this story up there I would include it with whoever sent in a nomination for me in that hall of fame. I Prepared and filed my taxes as an act of procrastination against preparing these remarks my taxes are not due for some time And so I was actually overcoming tax season procrastination Just to I couldn't bust bust through my procrastination on this on this thing But I mean what does that say when you're guilty pleasure that you're the intervening thing that you're not working on what you're supposed to be working on Is that you did your taxes? So I think if anyone can top that so it gets to be 11 o'clock at night on Sunday And I've taken time out of course to watch the walking dead followed by the talking dead Which is a one-hour show that analyzes the walking dead episode that you've just watched And so I finally broke down and called my brother and said I am so behind on this thing I just really need to get this done and and in a piece of very sage older brother wisdom. He said to me Tuesday when you still have 24 hours Christina pull that out So I he also found my description of my writer's block so interesting that he goes you should talk about that And so so that's what I've done So I want to say thanks to my brother and on an interesting sidebar On the point of I was joking with him about maybe I should do an interpretive dance. I kind of ran that by him He reminded me I thought I was making a joke and I thought it was the most ridiculous thing And I thought he'd get a laugh what she did but then he listened to me and he paused and he said Didn't you once do an interpretive dance at a family Thanksgiving and he I had had forgotten I did it one of my nephews said he had to write a school essay on gratitude and in order to his mother my sister-in-law Wanted him to read it so to make it a little more interesting. I agreed to interpret his essay as he was reading it through movement And it was really an enjoyable Thanksgiving memory for a lot of people. I'm glad there's nobody video taped it Thanks. Thank goodness. So so our families are really great For this type of wisdom at least in my experience. They know us well and having known us for a long time They look past, you know, not only what we think we are and all the trappings of that But you know any kind of illusions we have about ourselves and and I say wisdom there because wisdom is very different than knowledge And I draw distinction and I'm worried that wisdom is considered kind of a folksy thing That's undervalued. I've heard the distinction between the two described in a way I like it says knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad So at this point having talked about wisdom, I should apply some wisdom and Resist telling a science joke. I mean a lot of you were hitting me up even this morning and I think one of the benefits of serving this long on the Commission is That I have crystallized now on the piece of advice that I would give a new commissioner And maybe I didn't really come to this until last year this year for sure But I would tell them don't ever tell a joke at the regulatory information conference or something that will just Plague you for the rest of your time However for me, I would have to say there is no turning back So to those of you and I'm not sure you're a majority, but I'm gonna I'm going to indulge you I do get submittals all year long. That's another fun thing about Telling a joke at the Rick and I appreciate the submittals the judging process is highly subjective because it is just whatever I think is funny and I do get overlap in the submittals But I am going to credit this one to the man sitting up on the stage with me Eric Leeds. I Don't know if you recall this it's good to get extra credit points with your moderator because he's going through those note cards Like a riverboat gambler over there. He's just loading it up for me But Eric you sent me this in July of last year because I have the email here goes a Photon checks into a hotel and the Bellman asked him if he has any luggage No, the photon replies. I'm traveling light. Hey, are you groaning Eric? You sent it to me? That's not right Now I've been told that joke telling is fundamentally storytelling and I I really think that's the source of its power In her Ted talk the Nigerian author To momando Edikia says that stories are how we make meaning of our lives She says that stories are necessary Just as necessary as food or love and she says while stories have the power to dispossess and malign They also have the power to repair broken dignity But she cautions that if we want to understand a person or event We cannot know just one thing Something she terms the danger of the single story she explains it this way Edikia grew up in Nigeria Reading a lot of British children's books and when she was old enough to write stories of her own They were as she describes it full of children who were white and blue-eyed Who played in the snow who ate apples and who talked a lot about the weather and how wonderful it would be that the weather was The sun was shining because as she puts it Stories had to be about things with which I could not personally identify When she started reading African stories, she learned that girls like her could also exist in literature She says it saved me from having a single story and when we reject the falseness of the single story We regain a kind of paradise In the course of my journeys this year I met someone whose work is also attempting to defy the myth of the single story at the world nuclear Association conference in London this past September. I heard a woman speak as part of a panel on public communications Her name is Susie Hobbs Baker and she has talked about the work She is doing both individually and as part of the nuclear literacy project, which can be found at nuclear literacy dot o rg Through which she is using her unique voice to reclaim and reframe a public policy dialogue about nuclear issues To do this she uses her training in the disciplines of the visual arts as well as the prism of her own experiences Whether or not you agree with her viewpoint if you visit her website. I think you would find her voice unique She and her peers in the project seem to have as their aim Engaging their own generation on existing topics in unique ways with the goal of raising basic Literacy in the underlying science and technology concepts. I have seen something similar when I've spoken with the young generation In nuclear groups at some of the power plants I have visited during the last year The incoming generation of nuclear professionals is bringing new energy to issues that their predecessors Have long decided are simply too entrenched and too stale for continued fruitful dialogue Like many in their generation. They are not content to take our word for it So I asked this question as the current generation of leaders in this profession What is the value to us of this new dialogue? And if we think it has value should be we be working to empower the next generation in their undertaking Today is of course the three-year anniversary of the tragic tsunami and earthquake in Japan our hearts still break for our Colleagues our friends and their families and our minds still struggle to find meaning in the face of the suffering Created by this natural disaster The nuclear portion of which was only one element in The Sunday review of the New York Times in September of last year There was published an opinion piece by Pico air who is a distinguished presidential fellow at Chapman Chapman University But he's also an acclaimed travel writer who has lived and traveled around the world in Describing his his work. It has been said that he began his career documenting a neglected s aspect of travel The sometimes surreal disconnect between local tradition and imported global pop culture Since then he has written ten books exploring among other topics the cultural consequences of isolation Ires latest focus is on yet another overlooked aspect of travel How can it help us gain our sense of stillness and focus in a world where our devices and digital networks increasingly distract us About this he writes the following Almost everybody I know has this sense of overdosing on information and getting dizzy living at post-human speeds Nearly everybody I know does something to try to remove herself to clear her head and to have enough time and space to think All of us instinctively feel that something inside us is crying out for more spaciousness and stillness To offset the exhilarations of this movement and the fun and diversion of the modern world In a very different vein from that work However, the piece that drew my attention to this author wasn't tied to the value of suffering In it. Ayah writes wise men in every tradition tell us that suffering brings clarity illumination For the Buddha suffering is the first rule of life and in so far as some of it arises from our own wrong-headedness Our cherishing of self. We have the cure for it within I once met he says a Zen trained painter in Japan in his 90s who told me that suffering is a privilege It moves us towards thinking about essential things and shakes us out of short-sighted complacency When he was a boy, he said it was believed you should pay for suffering. It proves such a hidden blessing Ayah goes on to write As Kobayashi isu a haiku master in the 18th century put it the world of do is a world of do and yet and yet known for his words of constant Affirmation this haiku master had seen his mother die when he was two his first son die His father contract typhoid fever his next son and a beloved daughter die He knew that impermanence is our home and loss the law of the world I Are writes that my neighbors in Japan live in a culture that is based at some invisible level on the Buddhist precepts that I So knew that suffering is reality even if unhappiness need not be our response to it This makes for what comes across to us as uncomplaining hard work Stoicism and a constant sense of the ways difficulty binds us together I'll do my best and I'll stick it out and it can't be helped are the phrases you hear every hour in Japan He writes when a tsunami claimed thousands of lives north of Tokyo now three years ago I heard much more lamentation and panic in California than among my neighbors in Kyoto My neighbors aren't formal philosophers But much more in the texture of the lives they're used to is the national worship of things falling away in autumn The blaze of cherry blossoms followed by their very quick departure The haiku poems on which they're schooled these things speak volumes for an old Cultures training and saying goodbye to things and putting delight and beauty within a frame Death undoes us less sometimes than the hope that it will never come Almost eight months after the Japanese tsunami. He writes I accompanied the Dalai Lama to a fishing village that had been laid waste by the natural disaster Grave stones they tilted at crazy angles where they had not collapsed all together What once a year before had been a thriving network of schools and homes was now just rubble Three orphans barely out of kindergarten stood in their blue school uniforms to greet him outside of a temple that had Miraculously survived the catastrophe Inside the wooden building by its altar were dozens of colored boxes containing the remains of those who had no surviving Relatives to claim them all lined up perfectly in a row behind frame photographs of young and old as The Dalai Lama got out of his car. He saw hundreds of citizens who had gathered on the street behind ropes to greet him He went over and asked them how they were doing many collapsed into sobs Please change your hearts be brave. He said while holding some and blessing others Please help everyone else and work hard. That is the best offering you can make to the dead when he turned round However, I saw him brush away a tear himself The piece concludes as follows The only thing worse than suffering the only thing worse than assuming you could get the better of suffering I began to think though I'm no Buddhist is Imagining you could do nothing in its wake and the tear I'd witnessed made me think that you could be strong enough to witness suffering and yet human enough not to pretend to be the master of it Sometimes it's those things we least understand that deserve our deepest trust The most powerful line there to me is it's the one that says the only thing worse than assuming you could get the better of Suffering is imagining you could do nothing in its wake It was the author Elizabeth Kubler Ross who wrote the most beautiful people we have known are those Who have known defeat known suffering known struggle known loss and have found their way out of the depths These persons have an appreciation a sensitivity and an understanding that fills them with compassion gentleness and a deep loving concern Beautiful people she writes do not just happen The events at Fukushima have called forth acts of genuine heroism and we've been witness to great victories of the human spirit. I Have witnessed the same in other contexts around the world in the actions of emergency Emergency responders military personnel and law enforcement officers Women and men who with the proper training and indoctrination Overcome every human instinct and when duty calls they run into that burning building saving lives When they're every instinct should tell them to move away In a more traditional Western paradigm this idea brings to mind the words of Admiral Rick over who wrote Responsibility is a unique concept It can only reside and in here in a single individual You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished You may delegate it, but it is still with you You may disclaim it, but you cannot divest yourself of it Even if you do not recognize it or admit its presence you cannot escape it if Responsibility is rightfully yours No evasion or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden on to someone else Unless you can point your finger at the person who is responsible when something goes wrong Then you have never had anyone really responsible. I Appreciate your kind attention and wish you a productive conference. Thank you