Nuclear Issues

The historical record does not support the idea that nuclear energy programs increase the odds of proliferation.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, states with nuclear energy programs are not more likely than those without them to seek or acquire nuclear weapons.

Professor Nicholas Burns appeared on CNN to speak about the week's chaos in the White House, as well as recent events in North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. 

Former Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, a lead negotiator of the P5+1 Iran Nuclear deal and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center, talks with Aroop Mukharji (@aroopmukharji) about her place in history as the first female Undersecretary of State, Vladimir Putin’s sense of humor, and how many snacks it takes to fuel a negotiating team.

Dr. Ian Bremmer, expert in political risk and founder of the Eurasia Group, gave a seminar sponsored by the the Future of Diplomacy Project on Thursday, November 9 at the Harvard Kennedy School, titled “Managing Risk in an Unstable World."

Recent national trends in investments in global energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) are inconsistent around the world. Public RD&D investments in energy are the metric most commonly used in international comparative assessments of energy-technology innovation, and the metric employed in this article. Overall, the data indicate that International Energy Agency (IEA) member country government investments have been volatile: they peaked in the late 1970s, declined during the subsequent two decades, bottomed out in 1997, and then began to gradually grow again during the 2000s.

In the 1970s, nuclear-power boosters expected that by now nuclear power would produce perhaps 80 to 90 percent of all electrical energy globally. Today, the official high-growth projection of the Organization for Economic Co‑operation and Developments (OECD) Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) estimates that nuclear power plants will generate about 20 percent of all electrical energy in 2050. Thus, nuclear power could make a significant contribution to the global electricity supply. Or it could be phased out — especially if there is another accidental or a terrorist-caused Chernobyl-scale release of radioactivity. If the spread of nuclear energy cannot be decoupled from the spread of nuclear weapons, it should be phased out.