Bibliography - Alexander Glaser

1. Glaser, Alexander, and R. J. Goldston, 2012: Proliferation risks of magnetic fusion energy: clandestine production, covert production and breakout. Nuclear Fusion, IOP Publishing and International Atomic Energy Agency, 52(043004), doi:10.1088/0029-5515/52/4/043004
   [ Abstract ]

   Nuclear proliferation risks from magnetic fusion energy associated with access to weapon-usable materials can be divided into three main categories: (1) clandestine production of weapon-usable material in an undeclared facility, (2) covert production of such material in a declared facility and (3) use of a declared facility in a breakout scenario, in which a state begins production of fissile material without concealing the effort. In this paper, we address each of these categories of risks from fusion. For each case, we find that the proliferation risk from fusion systems can be much lower than the equivalent risk from fission systems, if the fusion system is designed to accommodate appropriate safeguards.

2. Socolow, Robert H., and Alexander Glaser, September 2009: Balancing risks: nuclear energy & climate change. Dædalus, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 138(4), doi:10.1162/daed.2009.138.4.31 31-44
   [ Abstract ]

   Nuclear power could make a significant contribution to climate change mitigation. To do so, however, nuclear power must be deployed extensively in many developing countries that increasingly share production and consumption patterns with the industrialized world. Some of these countries are politically unstable today. If nuclear power is sufficiently unattractive in such a deployment scenario, nuclear power is not on the list of solutions to climate change.
   
   Nuclear power will not benefit climate change if its contribution is withdrawn a decade or two after global scale-up begins, as a result of the coupling of nuclear power to nuclear weapons. The coupling of nuclear power to nuclear weapons is the most critical flaw of nuclear power today and is the result of nuclear power's inadequate system of international governance and its reliance on uranium enrichment plants and reprocessing plants under national control.
   
   A world considerably safer for nuclear power could emerge as a co- benefit of the nuclear disarmament process. A multilateral nuclear disarmament process might be the most effective way-perhaps the only way-for states to decouple nuclear power from nuclear weapons.
   
   The next decade is critical. It can used to establish international ownership of uranium enrichment, the cessation of all spent fuel reprocessing, and much more effective norms of international governance.
   
   Every "solution" to climate change can be done badly or well. Done badly, solutions can be worse than the disease. Making climate change the world's exclusive priority is therefore dangerous. Conceding that such conclusions can embody only the most subjective of considerations, we judge the hazard of aggressively pursuing a global expansion of nuclear power today to be worse than the hazard of slowing the attack on climate change by whatever increment such caution entails. If over the next decade the world demonstrates that it can do nuclear power well, a global expansion of nuclear power would have to be -- indeed, should be -- seriously reexamined.

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