''Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power: A Critical Global Assessment of Atomic Energy'' is a 2011 book by
Benjamin K. Sovacool, published by
World Scientific
World Scientific Publishing is an academic publisher of scientific, technical, and medical books and journals headquartered in Singapore. The company was founded in 1981. It publishes about 600 books annually, with more than 170 journals in var ...
. Sovacool's book addresses the current status of the global nuclear power industry, its fuel cycle, nuclear accidents, environmental impacts, social risks, energy payback, nuclear power economics, and industry subsidies. There is a postscript on the Japanese 2011
Fukushima nuclear disaster
The Fukushima nuclear accident was a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan, which began on 11 March 2011. The cause of the accident was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which ...
.
[ Based on detailed analysis, Sovacool concludes "that a global nuclear renaissance would bring immense technical, economic, environmental, political, and social costs". He says that it is ]renewable energy
Renewable energy (also called green energy) is energy made from renewable resource, renewable natural resources that are replenished on a human lifetime, human timescale. The most widely used renewable energy types are solar energy, wind pow ...
technologies which will enhance energy security
Energy security is the association between national security and the availability of natural resources for energy consumption (as opposed to household energy insecurity). Access to cheaper energy has become essential to the functioning of modern ...
, and which have many other advantages.[Sovacool, p. 126.]
In a review by author Mark Diesendorf the book "reviews the little-known research which shows that the life-cycle CO2 emissions of nuclear power may become comparable with those of fossil power as high-grade uranium ore is used up over the next several decades and low-grade uranium is mined and milled using fossil fuels".[ Diesendorf says that one weakness of the book is the limited coverage of nuclear weapons proliferation. He says that governments of several countries (e.g., France, India, North Korea, Pakistan) have used nuclear power and/or research reactors to assist nuclear weapons development or to contribute to their supplies of nuclear explosives from military reactors.][
]
See also
*List of books about nuclear issues
A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, bu ...
* List of books about renewable energy
* Nuclear or Not?
* Reaction Time (book)
* Non-Nuclear Futures
References
External links
Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power
at World Scientific.
Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power
at Google Books.
Nuclear Power's Global Expansion: Weighing Its Costs and Risks
2011 non-fiction books
Books about nuclear issues
Nuclear power
Nuclear history
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