The 1986 Chernobyl disaster galvanized a great deal of European, and to a lesser degree, American popular sentiment against nuclear energy. Whether or not it will be a solution to these problems, nuclear energy is long overdue for serious, organized, global reconsideration. Russia’s political tinkering with gas supplies is one reminder of the drastically increasing energy needs our world faces with its growing population and globalizing economy. In January 2006, during the coldest winter to hit in several years, Russia temporarily cut off gas supplies to Ukraine. Ukraine obtains slightly less than fifty percent of its electricity from nuclear energy, but is still energy-poor. In 2000 Russia accused Ukraine of stealing gas, and endless bickering between the two nations over gas rights and energy issues has ensued. Since its declaring independence from the fallen Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has had an uneasy relationship with Russia, especially on energy issues.Įnergy is a key tension point between these two nations since the Russian and Ukraine natural gas and power grids are strongly intertwined. At the same time, some of the independent states of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) are angling away from Russian dominance and corrupt regimes: most prominently, the 2004 Ukrainian Orange Revolution signaled a remarkable and peaceful effort on the part of the Ukrainian people to throw off their repressive and corrupt Russian-leaning government. In recent years the Russian Federation has proposed building a long-term storage site that would accept spent nuclear fuel from many nations. Recently the nuclear energy drama has been raised again with particular intensity in the former Soviet Union. Yet nuclear energy technology is still not significantly more cost effective than traditional energy sources, and its implementation produces hazardous wastes that to this day have not found a permanent storage facility anywhere in the world. Unlike coal and petroleum, nuclear energy produces no atmospheric waste gases, which are widely regarded today as a major cause of global warming. Nuclear energy has always been both an extremely promising and problematic technology.
Fuel reprocessing, new reactor designs, and talk of international control of atomic energy are the focus of political leaders and scientists as fossil fuel costs escalate and nuclear weapons materials proliferate across the globe. Nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuels is once again the topic of international political and scientific discussions. Home > Programs > Strategic Security > Nuclear Information Project > Nuclear Power and Fuel Cycle The Nuclear Dilemma and Lessons from Chernobyl
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