Nuclear Issues

In this deeply personal book, Joseph Nye shares his own journey living through the American century.

While China is building nuclear reactors faster than any other country in the world, major constraints may limit nuclear energy’s ability to grow to the scale of hundreds of gigawatts that would be required for it to play a major part in decarbonizing China’s energy system. This chapter explores the major constraints on, and risks of, large-scale nuclear energy growth in China, and how both new policies and new technologies might address them. It focuses particularly on the two biggest constraints – economics and siting. Substantial government policies to support nuclear power and advanced reactor systems designed to address some of the key constraints are both likely to be needed for nuclear to have a chance of playing a major role in decarbonizing China’s energy system; nuclear energy’s role may be bigger in the second half of this century than in the first half.

The Memorandum on Security Assurances in Connection with Ukraine’s Accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), signed in 1994 by Ukraine, and the three NPT depositary states, the United States, United Kingdom and Russian Federation, is not a ratified, legally binding treaty, but a set of high-level political commitments. Its significance is in explicitly linking Ukraine’s sovereignty and security to the NPT, and the basic bargains enshrined in it. The NPT’s depositary states gave Ukraine security assurances in exchange for Kyiv’s renunciation of the world’s third largest nuclear weapons arsenal. Moscow’s manifest violation of this deal when it invaded Ukraine in 2014 not only eroded European security. It has also undermined the rationale of the international nonproliferation regime. While not directly related to the question of the North-Atlantic Alliance’s enlargement, Russia’s disregard for the NPT’s logic has, since 2014, escalated Ukrainian critique of NATO’s insufficient engagement in Eastern Europe, during the last quarter of a century.

In her new book, Not for the Faint of Heart, Ambassador Sherman takes readers inside the world of international diplomacy and into the mind of one of our most effective negotiators―often the only woman in the room. She discusses the core values that have shaped her approach to work and leadership: authenticity, effective use of power and persistence, acceptance of change, and commitment to the team. She shows why good work in her field is so hard to do, and how we can learn to apply core skills of diplomacy to the challenges in our own lives.