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

Nelson, Paul; Sprecher, Christopher

doi:10.1504/afp.2010.031495

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…It is therefore not surprising that research by nuclear engineers generally does a better job of accounting for a state's ability to produce fissile material. For example, Nelson and Sprecher (2010) define nuclear latency based on whether non-nuclear weapons states have the ability to make nuclear fuel in large-scale production plants. However, their definition excludes numerous countries, like South Africa, that have the capacity to make fissile material for bombs on a smaller scale.…”

Section: Prior Attempts To Measure Nuclear Latencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Almost nuclear: Introducing the Nuclear Latency dataset

Fuhrmann

Tkach

2015

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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The capacity to build nuclear weapons—known as “nuclear latency”—is widely believed to be important in world politics. Yet scholarly research on this topic remains limited. This paper introduces a new dataset on nuclear latency from 1939 to 2012. It discusses coding procedures, describes global trends, and compares the dataset with earlier efforts to measure nuclear latency. We show that nuclear latency is far more common than nuclear proliferation: 31 countries developed the capacity to build nuclear bombs from 1939 to 2012, and only 10 of those states went on to acquire atomic arsenals. This paper provides one empirical application of the dataset, showing how the study of nuclear latency can contribute to our understanding of international conflict. We provide preliminary evidence that nuclear latency reduces the likelihood of being targeted in militarized disputes. Having the capacity to build nuclear weapons, therefore, may provide deterrence benefits that we usually associate with possessing a nuclear arsenal.

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Section: Prior Attempts To Measure Nuclear Latencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Almost nuclear: Introducing the Nuclear Latency dataset

Fuhrmann

Tkach

2015

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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“…There are a few noteworthy efforts underway to probe the correlates of nuclear power development in international relations (Gourley and Stulberg 2011) and nuclear engineering (Nelson and Sprecher 2010). Yet, despite the importance of this issue and the fact that nuclear energy seems to have broad appeal in political science and other disciplines, we still know relatively little about the factors that motivate countries to build nuclear power plants.…”

Section: Theory and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Splitting Atoms: Why Do Countries Build Nuclear Power Plants?

Fuhrmann

2012

International Interactions

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Why do countries build nuclear power plants? This article develops a series of arguments for national reliance on nuclear power relating to economic development, energy security, nuclear proliferation, the "supply side," norms, and nuclear accidents. Statistical tests of these arguments using a dataset on nuclear power plant construction in 129 countries from 1965 to 2000 yield two main conclusions. First, nuclear energy programs emerge and expand largely for innocuous reasons as a means to meet growing energy needs and enhance energy security. The evidence does not support the argument that countries pursue civilian nuclear power to augment nuclear weapons programs. If nuclear power contributes to nuclear proliferation, the former does not appear to take on a sinister dimension from the beginning. Second, major nuclear accidents substantially reduce the probability of reactor construction-especially in democracies and states that have not previously invested in nuclear energy. We are unlikely to observe a true "nuclear energy renaissance" in the aftermath of the March 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan. Accordingly, it is doubtful that nuclear power will be a meaningful solution to global climate change.

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“…Through this work Kroenig lays further foundation for quantitative proliferation assessments. In related work,Fuhrman (2008) Nelson and Sprecher (2010) in Are sensitive technologies enablers of civil nuclear power? An empirical study quantitatively assesses factors associated with the extent to which a given State relies on nuclear energy to generate electricity (termed -Nuclear Reliance,‖ or NR).…”

Section: 11mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The predictor variables that Nelson and Sprecher (2010) identifies are 1) Historic Alignment -as a surrogate for secondary material and technology assurance, 2) Relative coal reserves -as a ready, reliable, and inexpensive alternative fuel source for the generation of electricity, 3) Fuel-cycle state -a State that is not a nuclear weapons state but nonetheless attempts to attain some level of nuclear material or technology, 4) International Commercialization -a measure of the degree of incentive to the domestic NR of a State that derives from its success in the international market for nuclear materials and technology, and 5) Polity -the standard political science attribute measuring the degree to which a State has democratic tendencies, intended here as surrogate for regime stability.…”

Section: 11mentioning

confidence: 99%

Utility of Social Modeling in Assessment of a State’s Propensity for Nuclear Proliferation

Coles¹,

Whitney²,

Dalton³

et al. 2011

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National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Office of Nonproliferation Research and Development NA-22 Simulations, Algorithms, and Modeling program that investigates how social modeling can be used to improve proliferation assessment for informing nuclear security, policy, safeguards, design of nuclear systems and research decisions. Social modeling has not previously been used to any significant extent in proliferation studies. This report focuses on the utility of social modeling as applied to the assessment of a State's propensity to develop a nuclear weapons program.During the literature review and preliminary assessment conducted and documented in the first stage of this project (PNNL-18438, Utility of Social Modeling for Proliferation Assessment: Preliminary Assessment), we concluded that there are clearly opportunities to use social models to improve the understanding and assessment of proliferation-related problems particularly State-level proliferation. We discovered that since the advent of nuclear weapons political scientists have theorized about factors that indicate whether a State is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons program. The social factors identified by political scientists include indicators such as national identity, leadership, politics, domestic security, and economic interdependence which complement technical factors such as economic capability, nuclear capability, and availability of fissile material. For the purposes of this research, we refer to these social and geopolitical indicators as -social factors.‖ We assert that social modeling offers a way to leverage this body of theory and analyses to support proliferation assessments.

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

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Almost nuclear: Introducing the Nuclear Latency dataset

Almost nuclear: Introducing the Nuclear Latency dataset

Splitting Atoms: Why Do Countries Build Nuclear Power Plants?

Utility of Social Modeling in Assessment of a State’s Propensity for Nuclear Proliferation

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