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Fiona Harrison: trying to fill Alan’s shoes
It is difficult to believe that I joined the Global Threat Reduction Programme (GTRP) team nearly 10 months ago - time certainly flies when you are enjoying yourself! I feel very fortunate to be leading the fantastic team here in the Department of Energy and Climate Change and am hugely grateful to my predecessor Dr Alan Heyes for having passed on to me such a successful and well-run programme, built on the commitment and dedication of many, including CNCP’s head of programme Trevor Hayward and all those involved in CNCP. The GTRP is the UK’s largest programme of non-proliferation assistance and delivers the UK’s commitment to the G8 Global Partnership against the spread of weapons and materials of mass destruction. Under Alan’s leadership the GTRP has made a significant contribution to reducing proliferation risks and improving the security of all. The GTRP portfolio of programmes spans nuclear and radiological security, shut-down of plutonium producing reactors, and the safe disposal of spent nuclear fuel in NW Russia as well as scientist redirection. One of my responsibilities is to ensure the successful completion of these programmes by the end of the Global Partnership in 2012. I am delighted to be able to say that, thanks to the efforts of all participants, CNCP is fully on track to meet its objectives of creating 3,000 jobs by then. But the UK, like many other Global Partnership members, fully recognises that threats to our collective security will not have been eliminated by 2012. While threats remain, the UK is committed to tackling them, which means that my other responsibility is to develop the UK’s future programme. We anticipate that this will mean a shift in the geographical scope of the programme so that going forward it continues to address the most critical priorities and greatest security vulnerabilities. We also expect to be increasingly focused on sustainability, seeking to ensure that all the benefits of assistance programmes have a lasting and positive impact on the security of nuclear materials and know-how. Since joining the team, I have become an avid reader of the CNCP newsletter (although not, I am afraid, as yet in Russian). Not only is it an excellent way of keeping up with the progress of projects, it also provides ongoing feedback and evaluation of the impact that the programme is having—important evidence demonstrating the value of the programme. (It is, of course, a measure of the success of CNCP that its original Russian remit was extended a few years ago to a number of FSU states.) With a programme as wide-ranging as CNCP it is perhaps unsurprising that I have not seen as much of it yet as I would like. However, I was delighted to have a chance to discuss CNCP in Russia with Vladimir Sterekhov (Rosatom CNCP coordinator), when in Moscow in April for the launch of the 2008 GTRP Annual Report. This visit also gave me an opportunity to meet Patrick Gray and the HTSPE team in Moscow, who, in common with almost everyone I have met in the course of this post, impressed me with their dedication and commitment. And in June I made my first visit to see CNCP in action at the Institute of Nuclear Physics (INP) in Alatau. It was extremely gratifying to hear first hand from INP’s Director Adil Tuleushev about the successes of CNCP projects there and the benefits they are bringing to INP. For those of you who might be interested in my background, I studied Physics and Philosophy at Oxford University and went on to St Andrews to gain a DPhil in the foundations of quantum mechanics. I spent four years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Auckland, carrying out theoretical research in quantum and atom optics, before returning to the UK and joining a small internet information company as their Director of Logic. After four years, during which the company grew tenfold, I decided I was missing science so joined the Civil Service to work for the then Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King. Initially running a Foresight (www.foresight.gov.uk) horizon scanning project, I subsequently led the team that supported him on all domestic civil contingency matters (counter-terrorism, preparations for human pandemic flu, and handling outbreaks of animal diseases such as foot and mouth), with a stint in between working in Europe during the UK’s 2005 Presidency of the EU. All my previous jobs have been interesting – but none so much as working for GTRP! Dr Fiona Harrison, | |
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