INTRODUCTION AND WELCOME to ICENES 2007

The main objective of International Conference series on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems (ICENES) is to provide an international scientific and technical forum for scientists, engineers, industry leaders, policy makers, decision makers and young professionals who will shape future energy supply and technology, for a broad review and discussion of various advanced, innovative and non-conventional nuclear energy production systems.

 One can observe worldwide that Nuclear Energy is in a true process of re-birth, and our success in this process will clearly depend on the emerging ideas we can offer for a sustainable future for Nuclear Energy. This conference is the perfect forum from which to offer relevant contributions towards this re-birth.  In this century, the nuclear sciences representing cutting edge technology will play a major role in the formation of the intellectual assets of mankind taking us through to the next century.

Previous ICENES conferences were held in Graz (Austria), Lausanne (Switzerland), Helsinki (Finland), Madrid (Spain), Karlsruhe (Germany), Monterey (USA), Chiba (Japan), Obninsk (Russia), Tel-Aviv (Israel), Petten (The Netherlands), Albuquerque (USA) and Brussels (Belgium).  These conferences have enabled previously UNTHINKABLE IDEAS to be brainstormed into sound scientific concepts. 

 The first meeting in Graz in 1978 was initiated as a workshop with a small number of idealist scientists.  The 1980 conference in Lausanne saw ICENES gain global respect and become an international ongoing annual event.  Since then, the ICENES annual conference has made an important contribution to nuclear science and technology as a medium size International Conference.

 It would be more accurate and constructive to consider that nuclear energy, and other newly emerging alternative energy technologies, are complementing and not competing with each other. For this reason, the new dimension of ICENES2007 has been to extend the forum, which also comprises innovative non-nuclear technologies such as hydrogen energy and solar energy.

 The Organization Committee is proud to announce that ICENES2007 had a record number of paper submissions in the ICENES conference series with 108 paper presentations from 25 countries, as shown in the table below. The main topics of these papers are fusion science and technology, fission reactors, accelerator driven systems, transmutation, laser in nuclear technology, radiation shielding, nuclear reactions, hydrogen energy, solar energy, low energy physics and societal issues.

 With ICENES2007, we cross the threshold from being of medium size to becoming a large International Conference in nuclear sciences. We hope the conference enhances the quality and quantity of international interactions, discussions and collaborations and widens the scientific horizon.

 Sümer ŞAHİN

Table 1: Country listing of the presented papers at ICENES2007 based on the first authors

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