Long-Term Nuclear Industry Outlook - 2004
The nuclear industry has become increasingly efficient and global in nature, but may now be poised at a crossroads between graceful decline and profound growth as a viable provider of electrical energy. Predicted population and energy-demand growth, an increased interest in global climate change, the desire to reduce the international dependence on oil as an energy source, the potential for hydrogen co-generation using nuclear power reactors, and the improved performance in the nuclear power industry have raised the prospect of a “nuclear renaissance” in which nuclear power would play an increasingly more important role in both domestic and international energy market. This report provides an assessment of the role nuclear-generated power will plan in the global energy future and explores the impact of that role on export controls.
Nuclear Energy And The Implications Of The UN World Summit On Sustainable Development
The 2002 United Nations World Summit On Sustainable Development (WSSD) at Johannesburg, South Africa wrought in significant turn-around on attitudes toward energy as the delegates came to recognize that energy is at the heart of sustainable development. As history demonstrates, developing countries will not suppress their need to convert environmental resources into energy to generate economic growth. Nations require the capability to generate local and regional incomes, not “transfer wealth” if they are to develop. And the WSSD also brought acknowledgement that developing countries cannot be expected to invest in expensive efforts to curb their production of greenhouse gasses. When the need for energy gained WSSD recognition, the European Union intensified their demand for renewable energy targets. Such targets quickly became a stumbling block for energy negotiations as the developed countries recognized that most of the challenge would fall upon them. The U.S. target, for instance, would require that 12% of all U.S. energy be generated by renewables by the year 2012.
Globalization: Meaning and measurement
Abstract While there is much that is new about globalization, there is much about it that is familiar. As in the past, while globalization produces both winners and losers, aggregate gains exceed aggregate losses, and gains and losses occur within both rich and poor countries. While the rich tend to grow richer, so do the poor. Absolute measures of income inequality often increase with globalization, though they are not caused by it.