26 May 2010

GPPi publishes policy paper on "Questioning a Nuclear Renaissance"

GPPi has published a new policy paper entitled "Questioning a Nuclear Renaissance" authored by Dr. Benjamin K. Sovacool, Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and a Research Fellow in the Energy Governance Program at the Centre on Asia and Globalization. The paper is a product of a joint GPPi and Brookings Institution Global Energy Governance research program which is supported by the European Commission.

The paper takes a critical review of modern nuclear energy facilities and identifies key challenges as opposed to fully weighing the costs and benefits of nuclear energy. The paper relies not only on information from politics and economics sources but also literature from the disciplines of ecology, energy policy, public policy, natural resource management, and law. The article finds that modern nuclear power plants suffer from at least five limitations related to cost, safety and accidents, fuel scarcity, environmental insults (to water, air, and land), and insecurity and weapons proliferation. In aggregate, the article concludes that these challenges present possibly insurmountable obstacles to a true global nuclear renaissance.

To download the paper, please click here.

For more information on GPPi's Global Energy Governance program, please click here.

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