Who will supply the future of nuclear? Future supply of nuclear reactors, power plants and the fuel cycle may be more concentrated than today’s supply of oil and gas
By building a dataset of nuclear cooperation agreements from last 15 years the authors of a recent article published in Energy Policy show that Russia is the supplier in about 50% of all agreements related to nuclear reactors, power plants, and the fuel cycle. France, the US, China, Korea and Japan together account for another 40% of key nuclear technologies. With six suppliers meeting over 90% of market this means that nuclear market is more concentrated than oil and gas markets which each have ~18 suppliers for 90% of market.
The analysis also found that the US dominates softer nuclear cooperation related to safety, security and training. Part of this may be a legacy from a time when the US was much more active in providing technological assistance for emerging nuclear energy countries.
India and China emerged as the top clients of nuclear technology along with established nuclear energy countries like Ukraine and Bulgaria and several emerging nuclear energy countries like Jordan and Turkey.
The article on international nuclear energy cooperation, combining network science, nuclear policy and international political economy was co-authored by two MESPOM alumni, one of whom is also a graduate and another a current student of CEU PhD Program: Jessica Jewell (EnvSci '09 and PhD '13, First year Doctoral Student Award '10, Award for Advanced Doctoral Student '12, University-wide best dissertation award '14, )* and Marta Vetier (EnvSci '07, PhD candidate, Award for Advanced Doctoral Student '19)**, in collaboration with Daniel Garcia Cabrera (IIASA, Vienna). Congratulations to our alumni!
Support for the project was provided by the Energy and Society theme of CEU Intellectual Themes Initiative through the POLitical economy of Energy Transitions (POLET) project and the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme CD-LINKS under Grant agreement no. 642147 and the Leonardo da Vinci European Programme.
The international technological nuclear cooperation landscape: A new dataset and network analysis
Jessica Jewell, Marta Vetier, Daniel Garcia-Cabrera
Energy Policy, Volume 128, May 2019, Pages 838-852
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2018.12.024
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Jessica Jewell is a Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, and Associate Professor at the University of Bergen, Norway and partner in POLET (POLitical Economy of Energy Transitions), a project within CEU’s "Energy and Society" intellectual theme.
**Marta Vetier is PhD candidate at CEU’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy. Her research interests include the use of network science methods to study governance and international cooperation. Prior to embarking on her PhD, she worked for 10 years in the private, governmental and non-governmental sectors.