Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2006
Publication Title
2006 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society
Publisher
Insitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
First page number:
1
Last page number:
3
Abstract
Long time-horizon environmental risks with potential for global impacts have increased in visibility over the past several decades. Such issues as climate change, the nuclear fuel cycle, persistent synthetic chemicals, and stratospheric ozone depletion share some characteristics, including intergenerational impacts, strongly decoupled incidence of risks and benefits, substantial decision stakes and extreme uncertainty. What is not well understood are the similarities and differences among sources and implications of uncertainty among these global environmental threats, especially those associate with current and future human behavior. This describes the uncertainties associated with managing two global concerns: the nuclear (fission) fuel cycle and anthropogenic climate change. It finds that the two issue share some common uncertainties, some highly differentiated uncertainties and some interdependent uncertainty. It argues that these uncertainties preclude simple conclusions about the tradeoffs between risks from anthropogenic climate change and those from nuclear power. It concludes that a framework that treats uncertainty as an aspect of management, not as an analytical challenge, will both improve options for effective policy making and provide direction for useful (from a policy perspective) future research.
Keywords
Climate change; Nuclear energy; Policy making
Disciplines
Climate | Environmental Policy | Oil, Gas, and Energy | Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation | Public Policy
Language
English
Repository Citation
Hassenzahl, D. M.
(2006).
Uncertainty, climate change and nuclear power.
2006 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society
1-3.
Insitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ISTAS.2006.4375885
Included in
Climate Commons, Environmental Policy Commons, Oil, Gas, and Energy Commons, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation Commons, Public Policy Commons
Comments
©2006 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.
Proceedings of the ISTAS '06 Disaster Preparedness and Recovery, June 9-10, 2006, Flushing, NY. IEEE.