The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's Nuclear Security Initiative: Findings from a Summative Evaluation

The Nuclear Security Initiative (NSI) began as an exploratory effort in 2008 and, as with other Foundation initiatives, was intended to be a time-limited effort (though the timeframe for the Foundation's exit was not specified at the outset). The NSI was extended in 2011 and the last grants were made in 2014. Over seven years, the NSI pursued a number of strategies designed to reduce the risk of a nuclear disaster.Although security issues have never been a central element in the Hewlett Foundation's main programs, the Foundation does have a history of funding projects in the peace and security space when these issues touched on the Foundation's main focus areas. Re-entry into the nuclear security space was opportunistic; at the time of the NSI's inception, windows appeared to be opening, signaling that nearterm gains on pressing policy issues were possible. In 2007, four eminent statesmen (Kissinger, Shultz, Nunn and Perry) authored a provocative Wall Street Journal op-ed calling for "a nuclear-free world" and outlining the policy steps required to achieve it. This was the first such articulation by prominent foreign policy and national security leaders from across the political spectrum. Shortly thereafter came the election of Barack Obama who, as a Senator, had taken interest in advancing nuclear security and nonproliferation and who, when newly elected, began making these issues a first-tier national security concern of his Administration. Finally, there was increasing movement by some growing powers, such as Brazil and Turkey, to explore development of nuclear energy domestically, thereby increasing the risk of global nuclear proliferation.The evaluation that is the subject of this report revealed that the NSI set in motion new things in the field—including an increased and more intentional focus on advocacy and communications, increased coordination among funders, and increased attention to building the expertise and capacity of states outside of the P5 (United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, France) and other established nuclear powers, as opposed to focusing exclusively on US-Russia and US-China relations. The Hewlett Foundation's re-entry into the nuclear security space was seen as bringing "excitement and energy" and "innovation.

United States Nuclear Export Controls

This article will explore the U.S. nuclear export controls regime. It will initially discuss controls affecting the export of nuclear material, facilities, and specially designed components of nuclear facilities. This section will specifically consider export licensing procedures and requirements, agreements for nuclear cooperation, the specific export criteria for major nuclear cooperation, as well as the necessary policy determination. Then the Article will discuss the procedures and requirements for obtaining a license to export dual-use equipment, the authorization necessary for the export of nuclear technology and the subsequent arrangement process, which further aids in the implementation of U.S. non-proliferation policies

Stewardship of Test-Free Nuclear Arsenals

Maintaining nuclear arms in the current policy environment that frowns upon weapons testing coexists with a set of unresolved and disquieting issues regarding the disposition of test-free arsenals. Ivan Sanfrachuk, director of the World Security Institute's Moscow office explores the Russian perspective on international policies regarding the safety and reliability of the world's nuclear arsenals

Book review: nuclear energy: what everyone needs to know

Reviewing nuclear energy and disentangling myth from reality is essential to informing public opinion and policy making, and this accessible text provides a useful basis for assessing the risks, costs and benefits, finds Murray Collins

German Nuclear Policy Reconsidered: Implications for the Electricity Market

In the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima, German nuclear policy has been reconsidered. This paper demonstrates the economic effects of an accelerated nuclear phase-out on the German electricity generation sector. A detailed optimization model for European electricity markets is used to analyze two scenarios with different lifetimes for nuclear plants (phase-out vs. prolongation). Based on political targets, both scenarios assume significant electricity demand reductions and a high share of generation from renewable energy sources in Germany. Our principal findings are: First, nuclear capacities are mainly replaced by longer lifetimes of existing coal-fired plants and the construction of new gas-fired plants. Second, fossil fuel-based generation and power imports increase, while power exports are reduced in response to the lower nuclear generation. Third, despite the increased fossil generation, challenging climate protection goals can still be achieved within the framework of the considered scenarios. Finally, system costs and electricity prices are clearly higher. We conclude that the generation sector can generally cope with an accelerated nuclear phase-out under the given assumptions. Yet, we emphasize that such a policy requires a substantial and costly transformation of the supply and the demand side.Nuclear policy; climate protection; renewable energy; electricity market modeling

Policy voting, projection, and persuasion: an application of balance theory to electoral behavior

In this article differences between rational, policy-based, and rationalized voting are discussed, and it is argued that these forms of electoral decision making are not properly analyzed in existing electoral studies. Policy voting, persuasion, and projection are then redefined as three possible ways of restoring balance among imbalanced triads of political beliefs and attitudes. With the help of the Chernobyl nuclear plants issue it is shown that persuasion and projection are far more important ways of restoring balance than policy voting

Nuclear Waste and Native America: The MRS Siting Exercise

Drs. Gowda & Easterling provide cross-cultural perspectives on issues of risk perception, equity and policy as they affect nuclear waste storage on Native American sites

Declining Discount Rates: Evidence from the UK

We estimate schedules of declining discount rates for cost benefit analysis in the UK. We highlight the importance of model selection for this task and hence for the evaluation of long-term investments, namely climate change prevention and nuclear build.long-run discounting, state-space models,regime-switching models, climate change policy,nuclear build

Optimal Nuclear Waste Burial Policy under Uncertainty

The aim of this paper is to study the optimal nuclear waste burial policy under an uncertainty : the possibility that an accident might occur in the future. The framework is an optimal growth model with pollution disutility. We show, under some conditions on the waste burial policy, that nuclear power may be a long-term solution for the world energy demand. Under uncertainty on the future safety of the buried waste, the social planner will decide to decrease the rate of waste burying, but the evolution of consumption and hence the evolution of the level of buried waste, are ambiguous. Depending on some simple conditions on the balanced growth rate of the economy and on the preference parameters of the households, the optimal amount of buried waste may increase, even if there is a risk of accident in the future.Nuclear waste; pollution; growth; uncertainty