Nuclear Issues

Joseph Nye considers lessons from his own work on preventing the spread of nuclear technology in the 1970s.

Why do we think Vladimir Putin will not use “the bomb” when there is so much evidence that he will?

Juliette Kayyem writes that deliberately accepting some risks, and then being prepared when disaster strikes, will serve human societies better than pretending that perfect safety is achievable. We cannot prevent an earthquake or a tsunami, but we have control over how much death and destruction it causes.

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.

To ensure that the world has reliable access to the neutrons it needs, at the lowest possible cost, and to facilitate further efforts to minimize and eventually eliminate civilian use of highly enriched uranium, we need an international mechanism to anticipate worldwide neutron needs and plan how to meet them. In essence, the 2016 National Academies’ report recommendation (which sadly remains unfulfilled even in the United States) should be internationalized.

Ten years on, the lessons learned from the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident continue to focus on improving safety culture and regulatory oversight. However, the executive decisions that failed to prevent the disaster also demonstrate the necessity to re-examine the legal entities most often relied on for producing nuclear power: corporations.

Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns and former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes join Andrea Mitchell to talk about Biden's next steps on Iran and Russia. Burns says that Biden's "speech today at the Munich Security Conference has put the United States squarely back on center stage globally."

A Middle East-wide forum could facilitate dialogue and transparency on a range of short-term measures, engendering momentum to then take on other more complex items, such as regional arms control.

Does a lack of enthusiasm for nuclear energy among the U.S. public relate to connections with nuclear weapons? A critical area of public opinion remains understudied: the connection between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Scholars have theorized such a relationship in the public consciousness, but the premise has not been systematically investigated. The authors use two studies which provide evidence of psychological linkage. In fact, attitudes toward nuclear weapons may even drive those on nuclear energy.

As the COVID-19 pandemic devastates the world, nuclear power plants must remain safe and secure to provide electricity for food supply chains, emergency response teams, hospitals, and telecommunications in countries home to more than half of all people. Meanwhile, the Islamic State terror group has already announced its intent to exploit the pandemic, and other violent extremist organizations are also taking pains to use the crisis for their own purposes.