15 Items

Electricians install solar panels.

AP/Mary Altaffer

Report Chapter - Brookings Institution

Mexico’s Energy Reforms: A Blow to Realizing the Most Competitive and Dynamic Region in the World

| Feb. 28, 2022

In late 2017, Mexico made headlines as Italian company Enel bid what was then a world-record low price for renewable energy in the country’s third such energy auction. This development was possible due to the historical and sweeping energy reforms passed with broad support in Mexico in 2013. Then-President Enrique Peña Nieto had succeeded where previous Mexican presidents had failed, reversing decades of resource nationalism and overhauling the energy sector through constitutional reforms that gave the private sector a larger role and advantaged renewable energy in Mexico’s economy. The 2017 auction seemed to indicate Mexico’s bright future not only as a conventional oil producer, but also as a clean energy power.

Los Alamos National Laboratory, National Security Science, July 2015

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Discussion Paper - Managing the Atom Project, Belfer Center

When Did (and Didn’t) States Proliferate?

| June 2017

In this Project on Managing the Atom Discussion Paper, Philipp C. Bleek chronicles nuclear weapons proliferation choices throughout the nuclear age. Since the late 1930s and early 1940s, some thirty-one countries are known to have at least explored the possibility of establishing a nuclear weapons program. Seventeen of those countries launched weapons programs, and ten acquired deliverable nuclear weapons.

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Pantex Plant is the only U.S. serial  production facility.

NNSA

Report - Nuclear Threat Initiative

Innovating Verification: New Tools & New Actors to Reduce Nuclear Risks

    Author:
  • Verifying Baseline Declarations of Nuclear Warheads and Materials Working Group
| July 2014

Part of NTI's Innovating Verification reports series, Verifying Baseline Declarations of Nuclear Warheads and Materials analyzes how baseline declarations can contribute to near- and long-term arms control and non-proliferation goals and how to verify them without compromising sensitive information.

Winning the Peace

Photo by Martha Stewart

Report

Winning the Peace

May 16, 2014

The last seven decades without war among the great powers – what historians describe as “the long peace” – is a remarkable achievement. “This is a rare and unusual fact if you look at the last few thousand years of history,” said Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center and moderator of the IDEASpHERE panel “Winning the Peace.” “Furthermore, it is no accident. Wise choices by statesmen have contributed to ‘the long peace,’ which has allowed many generations to live their lives.”

Report

Podcast of Collins and Frantz Seminar:

Nov. 17, 2011

Veteran investigative journalists Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz addressed a seminar of the Managing the Atom project at Harvard Kennedy School on Nov. 15 on what they found during their years of research into the U.S. hunt for nuclear traffickers. Here are links to two podcast recordings from that event -- their remarks to the seminar, and the question-and-answer session with the audience, which included fellows from the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School.

New York Times reporters Thom Shanker, left, and Eric Schmitt, center, discuss their new book, <i>Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda.</i>

Sharon Wilke

Report

Podcast: New York Times Reporters Discuss Hunt for Al Qaeda

Nov. 02, 2011

Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, top international security reporters for the New York Times, spoke at a public seminar at the Harvard Kennedy School on Oct. 24 about their reporting on the secret campaign to pursue Al Qaeda since 9/11.

The event was jointly hosted by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. The co-moderators were Stephen M. Walt, faculty chair of the International Security Program, and Alex S. Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center (and a former New York Times reporter), who introduced them.

Paper - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present: Theoretical and Applied Questions

    Author:
  • Andrei A. Kokoshin
| June 2011

In the Foreword to this paper by Andrei Kokoshin, Belfer Center Director Graham Allison writes: "The global nuclear order is reaching a tipping point. Several trends are advancing along crooked paths, each undermining this order. These trends include North Korea’s expanding nuclear weapons program, Iran’s continuing nuclear ambitions, Pakistan’s increasing instability, growing doubts about the sustainability of the nonproliferation regime in general, and terrorist groups’ enduring aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons. Andrei Kokoshin, deputy of the State Duma and former secretary of Russia’s Security Council, analyzes these challenges that threaten to cause the nuclear order to collapse in the following paper."

Report - International Panel on Fissile Materials

The Uncertain Future of Nuclear Energy

    Editor:
  • Frank N. von Hippel
    Authors:
  • Anatoli Diakov
  • Ming Ding
  • Tadahiro Katsuta
  • Charles McCombie
  • M.V. Ramana
  • Tatsujiro Suzuki
  • Susan Voss
  • Suyuan Yu
| September 2010

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.

Mar. 29, 2010: a poster in Lahore, Pakistan, shows Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. As U.S. President Barack Obama hosted a nuclear security summit in April 2010, many states remained weak links in the global defense against nuclear terrorism.

AP Photo

Report - Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies

The Armageddon Scenario: Israel and the Threat of Nuclear Terrorism

| April 2010

The following study focuses on the threat of nuclear terrorism facing Israel. It begins with an overview of the nature of the threat, before turning to the potential perpetrators of nuclear terrorism against Israel, possible delivery mechanisms and targets, and the specific scenarios under which the threat to Israel might materialize. The study then presents possible policy options for Israel to deal with the threat, both unilaterally and in conjunction with the United States.