Nuclear Issues

3 Items

Policy Brief - Managing the Atom Project, Belfer Center

Smashing Atoms for Peace: Using Linear Accelerators to Produce Medical Isotopes without Highly Enriched Uranium

| October 2013

Accelerators can eventually be substituted for nuclear research reactors for the production of medical isotopes and for neutron-based research and other applications. The use of accelerators would reduce dependence on HEU and decrease the resulting risks. The United States and other countries should work together to provide the funding and exchange of information and ideas needed to speed up the development, demonstration, and deployment of technically and economically viable accelerator technologies to substitute for research reactors.

    A nuclear power plant in Beijing

    Bret Arnett, CC licensed

    Policy Brief

    China’s Nuclear Energy Industry, One Year After Fukushima

    | Mar. 05, 2012

    It has been one year since the disastrous nuclear accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011. Experts now view Fukushima as the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.

    In the aftermath, the Chinese government promptly reaffirmed that nation’s nuclear energy policy. Yet China also became the only nation among all major nuclear energy states that suspended its new nuclear plant project approvals. Before it would restart approvals, China said it would:

    1) Conduct safety inspections at all nuclear facilities

    2) Strengthen the approval process of new nuclear plant projects

    3) Enact a new national nuclear safety plan

    4) Adjust the medium and long-term development plan for nuclear power

    Where is China on this path, and what is the future of its nuclear power industry?