Asia & the Pacific

809 Items

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

Retired Lieutenant General Charles Hooper Named Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center

| Apr. 05, 2021

Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has named Lieutenant General Charles Hooper (U.S. Army-Retired) a non-resident Senior Fellow with the Center’s Avoiding Great Power War Project.

The demo reprocessing and MOX facilities under construction at Jinta, Gansu. Satellite image from March 1, 2020 (Coordinates: 40.333750, 98.494167). Note that significant construction activities for reprocessing facility project II likely started after December 2020. This March 2020 image shows related ground preparations.

DigitalGlobe

Analysis & Opinions - International Panel on Fissile Materials

China starts construction of a second 200 MT/year reprocessing plant

| Mar. 21, 2021

Commercial bidding and purchase documents and other accounts suggest China is likely to start construction of a second spent fuel reprocessing plant of the same capacity and at the same site as its first such plant, the CNNC Gansu Nuclear Technology Industrial Park in Jinta, Gansu province.

Nicholas Burns on CNN

CNN

Analysis & Opinions - CNN

Burns: Putin Doesn’t Deserve to be on the Same Stage as President Joe Biden

| Mar. 19, 2021

"President Biden was right to say what he said: President Putin is an autocrat, and Russia is now an authoritarian dictatorial country." Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO, talks about the US's allies and adversaries around the world. 

A satellite view of the Baihetan Dam, under construction on the Jinsha River in Yunnan province, February 4, 2020.

CNES/Airbus, used with permission

Paper

China Trading Power: Improving Environmental and Economic Efficiency of Yunnan’s Electricity Market

| March 2021

In this report, we propose a market reform pathway for Yunnan that is both feasible and applicable to address some of these challenges immediately, while aiming for a standard design based on well-documented international experience. Our proposal includes at its heart a pay-for-performance monthly capacity auction that can help cover revenue deficiencies in the energy market. Building on international experience with capacity markets, this approach provides incentives for availability when generation is needed most and is compatible with the adoption of a single energy market for all electricity resources. Out-of-market payments to cover stranded costs of certain firms can thus be minimized. Finally, engaging consumers in both these energy and capacity markets can create high-powered incentives to shift consumption to low-cost months and hours, benefitting the entire province.

Audio - Right Rising

The Australian Radical Right

| Mar. 16, 2021

Guest Mario Peucker joins Right Rising to walk us through the history of the radical right in Australia. Along with host Augusta Dell'Omo, Mario explores some of the critical issues for the radical right leading to the Christchurch terror attacks in 2019 and how Australian far-right activism has changed during the COVID-19 crisis.

A monument in front of reactor 4 at Chernobyl.

Adam Jones/Wikimedia Commons

Analysis & Opinions - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Chernobyl: A Nuclear Accident That Changed the Course of History. Then Came Fukushima.

| Mar. 11, 2021

Chernobyl still stands for the world’s worst nuclear accident. The full impact of a nuclear disaster on this scale is difficult to compute, not least because the effects that count most are often those that are most difficult to count. Beyond the number of lives lost and people displaced, beyond the money spent on accident mitigation and remediation, there are long-term health, environmental, social, economic, and political consequences that defy quantification. Thirty-five years on, we are still grappling with the full extent of Chernobyl’s impact on the world. Yet in a very real sense, we live in a world shaped by Chernobyl.