Climate Change, Nuclear Power and Nuclear Proliferation: Magnitude Matters
Authors: Robert J. Goldston
Abstract:
Integrated energy, environment and economics modeling suggests that worldwide electrical energy use will
increase from 2.4 TWe today to ~12 TWe in 2100. It will be challenging to provide 40% of this electrical power
from combustion with carbon sequestration, as it will be challenging to provide 30% from renewable energy
sources derived from natural energy flows. Thus nuclear power may be needed to provide ~30%, 3600 GWe, by
2100. Calculations of the associated stocks and flows of uranium, plutonium and minor actinides indicate that
the proliferation risks at mid-century, using current light-water reactor technology, are daunting. There are
institutional arrangements that may be able to provide an acceptable level of risk mitigation, but they will be
difficult to implement. If a transition is begun to fast-spectrum reactors at mid-century, without a dramatic
change in the proliferation risks of such systems, at the end of the century global nuclear proliferation risks are
much greater, and more resistant to mitigation. Fusion energy, if successfully demonstrated to be economically
competitive, would provide a source of nuclear power with much lower proliferation risks than fission.
__________________________________________________
Submitted to: Science and Global Security (March 2011)
__________________________________________________
Download PPPL-4617 (pdf 184 Kb 46 pp)
__________________________________________________