1. Need and market prospects for HTR process heat

SESSION I. KEYNOTE PAPERS

It has become customary to start any Conference on energy problems with a reference to the so called 'oil crisis1. There are of course very good reasons for doing so, since a little more than one year ago the energy picture of the world has been modified in a rather dramatic way; in such a way, in fact, whose far-reaching consequences are not yet fully grasped. Short of war circumstances, and even then , it was probably the first time in the recorded history of mankind that the value of a vital commodity, practically unreplaceable at short term and accounting for a sizeable portion of the total amount of world trade, was suddenly multiplied by a factor of three or four.