M. V. Ramana
Visiting Research Scholar 2009-2010
Climate Change has emerged as a major threat to our environment, which has prompted several calls for a large scale expansion of nuclear power. A considerable fraction of that expansion would have to be in developing countries because they constitute a significant and growing contributor to global carbon-dioxide emissions. During my period at STEP, I will be exploring some of the challenges and constraints to this expansion. Chief among them are economics, the institutional requirements for nuclear growth, the pressures in many developing countries to indigenously develop the many technologies and pieces of equipment needed in nuclear power generation, the close connection between nuclear energy and weapons proliferation, and public acceptance.
