Full Title: Redefining Leadership in the Global Nuclear Energy Market
Author(s): Andrew Paterson and Walter Howes
Publisher(s): Atlantic Council
Publication Date: December 1, 2013
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
This latest Energy & Environment Program report, entitled Redefining Leadership in the Global Nuclear Energy Market, addresses the range of options for the global future of nuclear energy and attempts to define the best international structures that will allow nuclear energy to maintain a viable share of the global energy portfolio. Global energy demand will increase substantially in the coming decades under pressure from global trends, including an increasing population that will reach 9 billion by 2040, and, for the first time in history, will be overwhelmingly urban. Meeting basic global energy needs will require the use of all available sources of energy while addressing and minimizing environmental and climate impacts. Nuclear energy is an established part of the world’s electricity mix, and provides large-scale, reliable, base-load electricity demand. As such, it seems to be well matched to fit into an increasingly urban world that aims to mediate environmental challenges.
The United States faces range of choices in deciding how to react to the increased demand for nuclear energy in many countries around the world that have concluded that a balanced energy portfolio that includes nuclear power is essential to their long-term energy security. Leadership in the landscape of nuclear safeguards, regulatory policy, and competition no longer requires selling or operating the most reactors; instead, it will increasingly be executed through international cooperative agreements and by multinational consortiums and investments, supported by government policies mindful of long-term benefits, such as energy security and emissions reductions. The path forward entails deeper and broader international cooperation between all interested parties: governments, regulators, suppliers, operators, and capital markets.