Nuclear power plants must be prepared to withstand everything from earthquakes to tsunamis, from fires to floods to acts of terrorism.
Interpretation
Nuclear power plants need to be resilient against various potential disasters.
The statement by Ban Ki-Moon emphasizes the necessity for nuclear power plants to be designed and built with robust safety measures that can protect them from an extensive range of natural and human-made disasters. This highlights the importance of safety regulations and preparedness in the energy sector to prevent catastrophic failures.
In practice
During a conference on renewable energy, one might cite this quote to advocate for stronger safety measures in nuclear energy.
Nuclear terrorism is one of the most serious threats of our time. Even one such attack could inflict mass casualties and create immense suffering and unwanted change in the world forever. This prospect should compel all of us to act to prevent such a catastrophe.
We have international standards regulating everything from t-shirts to toys to tomatoes. There are international regulations for furniture. That means there are common standards for the global trade in armchairs but not the global trade in arms.
Weapons of mass destruction violate more than individual lives - they cross international borders and jeopardize all people. They also drain resources that could be used instead for medicines, schools and other life-saving supplies. We must come together with even greater determination to prevent a WMD nightmare.
Throughout human history, in any great endeavour requiring the common effort of many nations and men and women everywhere, we have learned - it is only through seriousness of purpose and persistence that we ultimately carry the day. We might liken it to riding a bicycle. You stay upright and move forward so long as you keep up the momentum.
By including children with different learning abilities in mainstream and specialized schools, we can change attitudes and promote respect. By creating suitable jobs for adults with autism, we integrate them into society.
Freedom is a timeless value. The United Nations Charter calls for encouraging respect for fundamental freedoms. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights mentions freedom more than twenty times. All countries have committed to protecting individual freedoms on paper - but in practice, too many break their pledge.
When the sun is sending more energy to earth in one hour than the entire world consumes in a year, any political play to undermine our ability to harness this energy effectively and efficiently is clearly not economical but it's also unethical.
It is not just that science and technology are possible means of great human satisfaction, as well as a matrix of complex dominations. Cyborg imagery can suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ourselves.
The real value of science is in the getting, and those who have tasted the pleasure of discovery alone know what science is. A problem solved is dead. A world without problems to be solved would be devoid of science.
Science is founded on uncertainty. Each time we learn something new and surprising, the astonishment comes with the realization that we were wrong before.
Even though I knew pretty early that I was going to be a scientist, it wasn't the science that interested me in science fiction; it was the vision of future societies that, for better or worse, would be radically different from our own.
The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change presents very serious global risks, and it demands an urgent global response.
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