Editor's Note

Miles A. Pomper

Amid rising concerns over global warming and energy security, interest in nuclear power has grown. Promoters of a “nuclear renaissance” argue that, by constructing more nuclear power plants, there will be less carbon in the atmosphere and less dependence on energy from volatile regions. But those claimed benefits are often exaggerated, and advocates often downplay nuclear power’s substantial costs and security risks.

As Sharon Squassoni points out in this month’s cover story, some of these costs are economic. Even if nuclear energy were capable of meeting the expansive claims of its advocates, the fact would remain that nuclear energy is more expensive than alternative sources of electricity.

Nuclear energy advocates have also skewed the evaluation of its relative environmental benefits and costs, according to Harold A. Feiveson. He writes that an increase substantial enough to have an effect on global climate change does not appear feasible for a quarter century or more. Alternative paths, particularly energy efficiency improvements, offer equal or greater promise.

Moreover, Feiveson notes, increased use of nuclear power means increased spent nuclear fuel, even though countries have yet to find an effective way to deal permanently with the 10,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel discharged each year. One approach that the Bush administration favors is reprocessing elements of hazardous spent nuclear fuel to power nuclear energy plants. However, these technologies, he documents, would do little to manage the spent fuel problem while risking increased weapons proliferation.

The proliferation concerns arise because reusing spent fuel depends on taking advantage of plutonium in the fuel as a power source. Plutonium is one of two fissile materials used to make nuclear weapons. The other is highly enriched uranium, and any scenario that led to a substantial expansion in nuclear power would also likely lead to a number of countries involved with the potentially dangerous technology of uranium enrichment. As Lawrence Scheinman’s contribution notes, history makes clear that Bush administration efforts simply to restrict reprocessing and enrichment capabilities to the handful of current possessors, generally either nuclear-weapon states or wealthy, industrialized countries, are unlikely to succeed.

Our news section reports on several key developments: the U.S.-Russian standoff over missile defense and how it could affect a plan for a joint center to monitor missile launches, India’s possibly illegal efforts to acquire U.S. ballistic missile technology and recent missile tests, and a continuing and troubled effort to complete a key Russian facility for disposing of chemical weapons.

In our book review this month, Brad Roberts critiques The Minimum Means of Reprisal: China’s Search for Security in the Nuclear Age, which looks at Chinese nuclear forces and how U.S. policy moves might affect them.