Are sensitive technologies enablers of civil nuclear power? An empirical study

Atoms for Peace

Volumn 3, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 93-112

  Nelson, Paul ^a   Sprecher, Christopher M ^a  

^a TEXAS A AND M UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

fuel assurance; nonproliferation regime; nuclear power; OLS regression; proliferation

Indexed keywords

EID: 84969447088     PISSN: 1741640X     EISSN: 17416418     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1504/AFP.2010.031495     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. Carelli, M.D., et al., (2004) ‘The design and safety features of the IRIS reactor’, Nuclear Engineering and Design, Vol. 230, pp.151–167.
2. Energy Information Administration (2005a) ‘International energy annual, 2005’, World Total Net Electricity Generation, 1980–2005, Table 6.3, http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table63.xls (accessed 16 May 2008).
3. Energy Information Administration (2005b) ‘World estimated recoverable coal’, Table 8.2, http://www.eia.doe.gov/fuelcoal.html (accessed 18 June 2008).
4. Energy Information Administration (2007a) ‘Electricity basic statistics, 2006’, November, http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickelectric.html (accessed 29 June 2008).
5. Energy Information Administration (2007b) ‘International energy annual, 2005’, World Total Net Electricity Generation, 1980–2005, Table 6.3, 17 September, http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table63.xls (accessed 29 June 2008).
6. Energy Information Administration (undated) ‘Energy 101’, http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/energybasics101.html (accessed 15 December 2007).
7. George, G.R. (2007) ‘Financing new nuclear capacity: will the ‘nuclear renaissance’ be a self-sustaining reaction?’, Electricity Journal, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp.12–20.
8. Goldschmidt, P. (2008) ‘Nuclear renaissance and non-proliferation’, Lecture at the 24th Conference of the Nuclear Societies, 18–21 February, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/nuclearsocieties_2-19-081.pdf (accessed 3 May 2008).
9. Hamilton, T. (2008) ‘Nuclear revival bumps against atrophy: possible shortage of super-forged parts threatens to delay renaissance’, Toronto Star, 3 May, http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/420941 (accessed 3 May 2008).
10. Helm, D. (2002) ‘Energy policy: security of supply, sustainability and competition’, Energy Policy, Vol. 30, pp.173–184.
11. Hore-Lacy, I. (2006) Nuclear Energy in the 21st Century, London, London: World Nuclear University Press, p.28.
12. Hymans, J. (2006) The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13. IAEA (2002) ‘Country nuclear power profiles: the Netherlands (2002)’, http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/cnpp2004/CNPP_Webpage/countryprofiles/Netherlands/Netherlands2003
14. IAEA (2003) ‘Country nuclear power profiles: Brazil (2003)’, http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/cnpp2004/CNPP_Webpage/countryprofiles/Brazil/Brazil2003.htm (accessed 29 June 2008).
15. IAEA (2004a) ‘Country nuclear power profiles’, Department of Nuclear Energy, Division of Nuclear Power, Nuclear Power Engineering Section, http://www-ub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/cnpp2004/CNPP_Webpage/pages/countryprofiles.htm (accessed 15 December 2007).
16. IAEA (2004b) ‘Country nuclear power profiles: Japan (2004)’, http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/cnpp2004/CNPP_Webpage/countryprofiles/Japan/Japan2004.htm (accessed 29 June 2008).
17. IAEA (undated) ‘International Project on Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycles (INPRO)’, Nuclear Power Technology Development Section, http://www.iaea.org/OurWork/ST/NE/NENP/NPTDS/Projects/INPRO/index.html (accessed 23 September 2008).
18. Jo, D-J. and Gartzke, E. (2007) ‘Determinants of nuclear weapons proliferation’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 51, No. 1, pp.167–194.
19. Lewis-Beck, M.S. (1980) Applied Regression: An Introduction, Sage University Paper 22, Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
20. Lidsky, L.M. and Miller, M.M. (2002) ‘Nuclear power and energy security: a revised strategy for Japan’, Science and Global Security, Vol. 10, pp.127–150.
21. Marshall, M.G., et al., (2002) Polity IV project, http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/inscr.htm (accessed 23 September 2008).
22. Nelson, P. and Sprecher, C.M. (2008) ‘What determines the extent of national reliance on civil nuclear power?’, Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, Report No. NSSPI-08-014, 14 December, http://nsspi.tamu.edu/projects/p21/p21_pub1.pdf.
23. Nelson, P., Woddi, T.V.K. and Charlton, W.S. (2007) ‘A framework for analysis of the weapons implications of the U.S.-India nuclear accord’, Report No. NSSPI-07-010, Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute, Texas A&M University, 10 October, http://nsspi.tamu.edu/projects/p0/p0_pub11.pdf.
24. Nuclear News (2007) ‘World list of nuclear power plants’, March, pp.35–48.
25. Nuclear News (2008) ‘IAEA would have authority over enrichment facility’, April, p.64.
26. Nuclear Threat Initiative (2008) ‘Argentina profile’, http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Argentina/index.html (accessed 29 June 2008).
27. Sagan, S.D. (1996–1997) ‘Why do states build nuclear weapons?: three models in search of a bomb’, International Security, Vol. 21, pp.54–86.
28. Solingen, E. (1996) Industrial Policy, Technology, and International Bargaining. Designing Nuclear Industries in Argentina and Brazil, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
29. Thayer, B.A. (1995) ‘The causes of nuclear proliferation and the utility of the nuclear nonproliferation regime’, Security Studies, Vol. 4, pp.463–519.
30. The Economist Newspaper Ltd. (2007) Pocket World in Figures, London: Profile Books Ltd.
31. Tomero, L. (2008) ‘The future of GNEP’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 9, 31 July, http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/reports/the-future-of-gnep/the-future-of-gnep-the-international-partners (accessed 20 September 2008).
32. United Nations (undated) ‘United states member states’, http://www.un.org/members/list.shtml (accessed 16 December 2007).
33. Warrick, J. (2008) ‘Spread of nuclear capability is feared: global interest in energy may presage a new arms race’, Washington Post, 12 May, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/11/AR2008051102212.html (accessed 18 May 2008).
34. Yadav, S. (2008) ‘Spain eyes India’s lucrative nuclear market’, CNN-IBN, 20 September, http://www.ibnlive.com/news/spain-eyes-indias-lucrative-nuclear-energy-market/73967-3.html (accessed 20 September 2008).
35. Yergin, D. (2006) ‘Ensuring energy security’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, pp.69–82.
36. The major exception to this is Solingen (1996), which is a comparative study of two states rather than a cross-national analysis.
37. MWe = MegaWatt electrical, which is the commonly used unit for denominating the capacity of a plant for generating electricity.
38. See (IAEA, undated), for an international programme directed in substantial part toward small to medium scale reactors. The Westinghouse IRIS (International Reactor Innovative and Secure) is a medium-scale (335 MWe) commercially offered PWR (cf. Carelli et al., 2004).
39. Anecdotal reports currently circulating put the capital cost of a 1000 MWe NPP in the vicinity of $5 billion. However, it is difficult to pin down exact numbers, in the absence of any firm orders, with concomitant risk-sharing agreement among the participating organisations.
40. This includes Iran, in anticipation of its long-awaited Bushehr plant going into operation; however, in the absence of any operating experience, and to be consistent with the source used for NR for other states, the NR of Iran is here reckoned as zero (Nuclear News, 2007).
41. This differs from the 16% global average quoted previously, because the 9.5% figure is an unweighted average of NRs over the 86NC states only, whereas the 16% is the percentage of electricity generated globally that come from nuclear energy. If electrical generation from other than the 86NC states were negligible, then presumably the mean NR of the 86NC states, as weighted by their respective values of electricity generated, would approximate 16%.
42. France and Lithuania both have a NR, per the indicated metric, of .79 = 79%.
43. The term ‘standardised’ is widely employed in the social sciences, to denote some type of transformation of a variable into ‘natural’ units. Two examples are P standardisation, in which each observation of a variable is assigned a number corresponding to the percentage of observations below it, and F standardisation, in which the zero point of the associated measure is taken as the mean of the observed values, and the scale is determined by assigning the value one to the standard deviation of the observations (i.e., the square root of the sum of the squares of the differences between the observations and the means). In the physical sciences the process of converting to some such ‘natural’ units is often termed as ‘normalization’.
44. Symbols for dichotomous variables will end with ‘?’, which suggests their values represent answers to yes/no questions. (For example: ‘Does this state engage in IC in nuclear technology or refined nuclear materials?’.)
45. Interviews of decision makers are one traditional way to ascertain such information. Unfortunately it is tempting for such leaders to mask, perhaps subconsciously, mistakes made in domestic calculation by casting blame on external influences. The issue of nuclear assurance is well-suited to such misdirection.
46. The NWSs recognised under the NPT are China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA.
47. Successor states to the former Yugoslavia are considered not to have been historically aligned.
48. Coal reserve data employed in this measure ‘recoverable anthracite and bituminous’, in millions of short tons (Energy Information Administration, 2005b).
49. “In August 2006, Buenos Aires announced a major nuclear initiative worth $3.5 billion to finish its third nuclear reactor plant (Atucha II), restart a heavy water production plant in Neuquen Province, and conduct feasibility studies for construction of a fourth reactor at Embalse. It also plans to resume nuclear enrichment activities at the Pilcaniyeu complex using a gaseous diffusion based enrichment technology known as SIGMA, which is purported to be more economic and more proliferation resistant than alternative methods of enrichment” (Nuclear Threat Initiative, 2008).
50. “As part of its nuclear propulsion programme, the Brazilian Navy installed in Ipero a demonstration enrichment centrifuge pilot plant. Recently the Brazilian Government decided to start the industrial implementation of the ultracentrifuge process developed by CTMSP in the Resende Industrial Plant in the state of Rio de Janeiro. It is expected the first unit to start operation by end-2003. The complete set of units is intended to be operating in eight years, to attend the ANGRA 1 needs and partially the needs of ANGRA 2 and 3 (~300 000 SWU/year). A future increase of this capacity will depend on technical evaluation and resources availability” (IAEA, 2003).
51. “The Bruce Heavy Water Plant in Ontario was the world’s largest heavy water production plant with a capacity of 700 tonnes per year. … Improved efficiency in the use and recycling of heavy water plus the over-production at Bruce left Canada with far more heavy water than it needed for its future needs. Also, the Girdler process (employed at that plant) released large amounts of hydrogen sulfide as a byproduct, raising environmental concerns. The Bruce plant was shut down in 1997. In 2003, the new owners of the site asked for permission to decommission and disassemble the plant. Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) is currently researching other more efficient and environmentally benign processes for creating heavy water. This is essential for the future of the CANDU reactors since heavy water represents about 20% of the capital cost of each reactor” from ‘Heavy water’, http://neohumanism.org/h/he/heavy_water.html#Canada (accessed 29 June 2008). The upshot is that while Canada seems currently to have no production facilities for D2O, AECL has considerable technological experience in this area. It also has, as the world’s only commercial purveyor of heavy-water reactors, considerable interest in maintaining and improving that technology.
52. “Fuel cycle activities in Japan comprise enrichment, conversion, fuel fabrication, zircaloy cladding, reprocessing and radioactive waste activities” (IAEA, 2004b).
53. “Uranium enrichment in the Netherlands is carried out by Urenco Nederland B.V. … Uranium enrichment is the most important part of the fuel cycle for the Netherlands and it is very successful. Urenco Nederland BV has a licence for a capacity of 2500 t SW/a (tonnes of separative work per year)” (IAEA, 2002).
54. One reasonably could include Iran as a FCS, but here we elect not.
55. For details see Nelson and Sprecher (2008).
56. All data analysis in this paper was conducted in MATLAB and replicated with Stata, version 10.
57. Respective inclusion and removal threshold values of p = .05 and p = .10 were employed.
58. For an accessible introduction to the topic of multicollinearity, see Lewis-Beck (1980).
59. Nelson and Sprecher.
60. The root mean-square error is formed by dividing the sum of the squares of the residuals by the number of observations, and taking the square root of the result. It is primarily used here as a relative measure of the explanatory capability of the models emerging at the various steps, with smaller root mean-square error implying a higher degree of explanation.
61. Adjusted R-square := 1 – (sum-square of residuals / (n – p – 1)) / (sum-square of observations / (n – 1)), where n is the number of observations and p is the number of predictors in the linear model.
62. The Pearson correlation coefficients between FCS?, on the one hand, and 1C?, ALGN? and COAL, on the other hand, are respectively .27, –.12 and –.06.
63. The authors are indebted to Dr. Jon Phillips, of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, for pointing out this possible mechanism. We conjecture this was a significant factor in the cases of Canada, Japan and the Netherlands.
64. This perhaps was a dominant factor for Argentina and Brazil, although it could have been a factor, to varying degrees, in all six of the remaining FCSs.
65. It has been reported that “countries that don’t currently enrich uranium or reprocess such as South Africa, Argentina, Canada, and South Korea have all declared their interest in acquiring sensitive nuclear technologies since GNEP was announced”. See Tomero (2008). Note that in the present work Argentina and Canada are already considered as FCSs, and South Africa and South Korea are considered as engaged in IC in nuclear M&T.
66. These preliminary results are available by request from the authors. Space precludes more detailed discussion of these results in this paper.
67. The nonproliferation and Article IV benefits are not altogether distinct. That is, certainly one might argue that were the Article IV obligation taken more seriously, especially by the USA, it could increase the rationally estimated value of assurance programmes, and thereby have a tangible, if indirect, benefit to the cause of nonproliferation.