Energy

Energy and water are tightly linked. We use extraordinary amounts of energy for municipal water systems and irrigation. And we use huge volumes of water in energy too. How could we use less energy and water to make more of both? Afreen Siddiqi and Newsha Ajami discuss on PBS' Energy Switch.

The Belfer Center Communications Team reached out to policy experts John P. Holdren and Matthew Bunn to reflect on the recent achievement of fusion ignition at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 

As the best documented major crisis in history, in substantial part because Kennedy secretly taped the deliberations in which he and his closest advisers were weighing choices they knew could lead to a catastrophic war, the Cuban missile crisis has become the canonical case study in nuclear statecraft. Over the decades since, key lessons from the crisis have been adapted and applied by the successors of Kennedy and Khrushchev to inform fateful choices.

For a night on March 3, Russian military forces seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, damaged its infrastructure, and spread fear of a nuclear catastrophe. Fortunately, the attack did not threaten sensitive areas of the nuclear power plant, and radiation levels around the plant did not raise concern. Still, the crisis underscored the danger posed by a war that crosses paths with a nuclear power plant. Since this may be a case of when, not if, the next wartime attack on a nuclear power plant happens, scholars and policymakers would be wise to revisit concepts for assessing and protocols for responding to nuclear power plant crises in war zones. 

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.

As the battle for Ukraine enters its third week, the specter of Chernobyl, site of world's worst nuclear accident, returns to haunt us. A few hours after the Russian invasion started, early on Feb. 24, the Russian military occupied the Chernobyl exclusion zone, some 30 kilometers in radius, that houses the decommissioned power plant, nuclear fuel storage, and nuclear waste facilities. On March 9, Ukraine's nuclear regulator informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that the Chernobyl power plant lost electricity and that the safe operation of the plant's cooling system was in danger.

NPR's Leila Fadel talks Mariana Budjeryn, a Ukrainian and a nuclear expert at Harvard's Belfer Center, about the dangers of Russia seizing control of Ukraine's nuclear power plants.

Mariana Budjeryn, Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom, discusses the risks of Russian attacks near nuclear facilities in Ukraine on CNN Newsroom Live, March 6, 2022.

Mariana Budjeryn, Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom, speaks about the Chernobyl nuclear site losing power under Russia control on CNN Hala Gorani Tonight.

Mariana Budjeryn, Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom, shares details of Russia's shelling of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine on CNN Newsroom.