Nuclear Power, Weapons Proliferation, and Climate Change: New Issue of Journal Daedalus Explores the Global Nuclear Future

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In the future there will be more nuclear technology spread across more nations than ever before. Will the growth of nuclear power lead to increased risks of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear terrorism? Will the nonproliferation regime be adequate to ensure safety and security in a world more widely and heavily invested in nuclear power?

Policy experts, economists, scientists, and nuclear industry leaders from various perspectives and nations explore these questions in a special two-volume issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The first volume will be published October 9.

The authors examine the interconnected issues of a potential worldwide expansion of civilian nuclear power, attendant risks of weapons proliferation and nuclear terrorism, and the prospects for lessening the impact of climate change through growth in nuclear energy.

All of the articles in the special Daedalus issue can be accessed on the Academy's web site at: http://www.amacad.org/publications/daedalus/fall2009/coverpage.aspx.

The volume is part of the Academy's multi-year Global Nuclear Future Initiative, a project that brings together research groups focused on the nuclear industry, the future fuel cycle, the protection of nuclear materials, and the emergence of a new international nuclear regulatory regime. The work is principally supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Fred Kavli of the Kavli Foundation.

Beginning in the late 1950s, the Academy was instrumental in establishing arms control and nuclear proliferation as fields of academic study, publishing a seminal issue of Daedalus on arms control in 1960, followed by special issues on Cold War arms control in 1975 and the future of arms control in 1991. For over a decade, the Academy was also the U.S. sponsor of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs (which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995).

Steven E. Miller and Scott D. Sagan, co-directors of the Academy's Global Nuclear Future Initiative, guest edited the double-volume issue of Daedalus. The first issue includes the following essays:

Steven E. Miller and Scott D. Sagan: Nuclear power without nuclear proliferation?

Richard K. Lester and Robert Rosner: The growth of nuclear power: drivers and constraints

Robert H. Socolow and Alexander Glaser: Nuclear energy and climate change

Paul L. Joskow and John E. Parsons: The economic future of nuclear power

Harold A. Feiveson: A skeptic's view of nuclear energy

Jose Goldemberg: Nuclear energy in developing countries

John W. Rowe: Nuclear power in a carbon-constrained world

Anne Lauvergeon: The nuclear renaissance: an opportunity to enhance the culture of nonproliferation

Richard A. Meserve: The global nuclear safety regime

Matthew Bunn: Reducing the greatest risks of nuclear theft and terrorism

Thomas C. Schelling: A world without nuclear weapons?

Paul Doty: The minimum deterrent and beyond

Sverre Lodgaard: Toward a nuclear-weapons-free world

Sam Nunn: A world free of nuclear weapons

Scott D. Sagan: Shared responsibilities for nuclear disarmament

The MIT Press publishes Daedalus for the American Academy. To subscribe, order an issue, or learn more about the journal, please visit http://mitpress.mit.edu/daedalus.

Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. Current Academy research focuses on science and technology policy; global security; social policy; the humanities and culture; and education. With headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Academy's work is advanced by its 4,600 elected members, who are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business and public affairs from around the world. (www.amacad.org)

CONTACT:

Paul Karoff, pkaroff@amacad.org, 617 576-5043

SOURCE American Academy of Arts & Sciences