Mohamed ElBaradei Interview (page: 4 / 7) Nobel Prize for Peace	Print Interview

We all have our stresses and conflicts, but we don't have the kinds of pressures that you do. Your work is concerned with the world's survival. How do you deal with the stress?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Mohamed ElBaradei: First of all, you learn to manage stress. You learn to live with stress. I mean, stress is there all the time. There's no question about it. It's in the morning. It's at night. It's at 3:00 in the morning, but you need to learn how to manage stress. Sometimes it's more difficult than others, but you try to distract yourself. Whenever I have the chance, I like to go and have a round of golf. I have a passion for modern art. I have a passion for antique carpets, classical music. To me, these are distractions, and sometimes my wife, she think I'm obsessed with these little things, but I tell her it is my way of distracting myself from just constantly continuing about my work. But the stress is there. But sometimes, the euphoria you get from a sense of achievement in many ways compensates all the stress you had for a year or two.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

Sometimes you see you have done something which has a positive impact on humanity. Just recently...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I was in Ghana, and I saw that we provided a radiotherapy machine to treat people with cancer in Ghana. It was the only radiotherapy machine in Ghana, and people from four different neighboring countries came to be treated with this machine. You have no idea the sense of achievement. You know, here is something, while not earth-shattering, but here is something at least where my organization and I could make a difference in helping people to survive.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

Often, when we hear the word "nuclear," we only think of weapons, and forget how atomic energy is applied in medicine. Could you tell us more about the positive uses of atomic energy?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Mohamed ElBaradei: People forget the positive aspect of nuclear (energy) because what they see in the media all the time is the negative aspects of nuclear, is the agency role as a watch dog, as it is called. They forget that we still get 16 percent of the world's electricity from nuclear energy. They forget that we need nuclear energy, at least for the next 50 years, because we only have nuclear energy and fossil fuel: gas and coal. And gas and coal have their own problems -- climate change -- and nuclear, of course, has the risk of a severe accident. But we need both. We need to weigh the costs and benefits. We need to understand the benefits outweigh the cost.

I always give the example of flight. When we fly, we take a risk. But if we don't fly and we go walking? You make the choice. Either you go to New York in one week driving, and even there you take some risk, or you fly in five hours. Same with energy.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. There is no source of energy that does not have some risk, and what we try to do with nuclear -- is maximize the benefit and minimize the risk. Then of course, there are those other applications of nuclear. In the medical field, for example, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, diagnosis of heart diseases through radioisotopes. I think every one of us would know a person who has been diagnosed with cancer or who has been treated through radiotherapy or through nuclear medicine, for example. That is an area where I would like to see maximizing around the globe.

Unfortunately, we don't have enough resources to do more, but an area where I would like to see the agency doing more is in the area of water resources. Water is becoming so scarce, and we use radioisotope techniques to help countries manage groundwater sustainably. In the area of agriculture, lots of new varieties of crops are being developed through mutation. It is not genetic engineering, but through natural mutation. So in the area of agriculture, health, water, industry -- and of course, electricity generation -- nuclear still has a very important role to play. I will give you one example...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I went to Nigeria recently, and I compare that with the U.S. In the U.S., every American has 16,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. That is enough, obviously, to empower your refrigerators, your air-conditioning, your iPods, everything you need. In Nigeria, they have 70 kilowatt hours per year. That translates into an 8-watt light bulb.

Did you say eight?

Mohamed ElBaradei: An eight-watt light bulb. That's not even enough to power your personal computer. Without energy, there is no development. Without development, there is a sense of despair, and with a sense of despair, there are extremists. We need to understand always the link between development and security. That's something I very strongly believe in, and people need to understand. We cannot just erect borders.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. We cannot erect walls between the north and the south, between the rich and the poor. We need to make sure that we have an equitable world, where every human being has the right to live a decent life, the right to live a life free from fear, the right to be able to send his kids to have education, the right to have Social Security in their old age. If you do that, I think the insecurities we feel -- the extremists that we are seeing -- will drop absolutely dramatically.

[ Key to Success ] Vision

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