The initiative of the World Council of Nuclear Workers to organise the 1st international
conference on " Natural analogues : Nature's paradigm for deep radioactive waste
repositories ", was warmly welcomed by a portion of the scientific community concerned and
some of the supervisory authorities responsible for managing the products of the back end of
the nuclear fuel cycle, dealing with this vital question for the future of the world nuclear
industry. Yet this reception was not unanimous, and even aroused varying degrees of
hostility in some circles, involving financial troubles for the conference.
Faced with these difficulties, compromising the success of the conference, WONUC's
Board of Administration decided to postpone the date of the conference to 2002. The first
international conference on " Natural analogues : Nature's paradigm for deep
radioactive waste repositories " will accordingly take place in St Petersburg (Russia) or
in Sweden in 2002.
We sincerely hope that you realise that our sole purpose is to ensure the full success of
an initiative of whose validity and importance we have always been convinced.
We would like to ask any people not willing to knee in face of this new way of scientific
censorship to support our initiative, for example in sending us any list of experts that
they would like to submit paper. Any other idea for the success of our initiative will be
welcome.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
All the necessary information will available very soon. A new call for papers will be
issued late this summer.
