Abstract
Understanding the role of technology characteristics and the context in the diffusion of new energy technologies is important for assessing feasibility of climate mitigation. We examine the historical adoption of nuclear power as a case of a complex large scale energy technology. We conduct an event history analysis of grid connections of first sizable commercial nuclear power reactors in 79 countries between 1950 and 2018. We show that the introduction of nuclear power can largely be explained by contextual variables such as the proximity of a country to a major technology supplier (‘ease of diffusion’), the size of the economy, electricity demand growth, and energy import dependence (‘market attractiveness’). The lack of nuclear newcomers in the early 1990s can be explained by the lack of countries with high growth in electricity demand and sufficient capacities to build their first nuclear power plant, either on their own or with international help. We also find that nuclear accidents, the pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the advances made in competing technologies played only a minor role in nuclear technology failing to be established in more countries. Our analysis improves understanding of the feasibility of introducing contested and expensive technologies in a heterogenous world with motivations and capacities that differ across countries and by a patchwork of international relations. While countries with high state capacity or support from a major technology supplier are capable of introducing large-scale technologies quickly, technology diffusion to other regions might undergo significant delays due to lower motivations and capacities.
Highlights
Meeting climate targets requires a rapid expansion of low-carbon technologies [1], the feasibility of which is debated [2,3,4]
We show that the technology characteristics: the experience of the global nuclear power industry, the advances made by the main competitors, accidents at nuclear power plants, and the association of nuclear power with nuclear weapons did not affect the worldwide diffusion of nuclear power as much as contextual factors
We show that at the formative phase of nuclear power, context-specific factors such as market attractiveness and ease of diffusion, played a more prominent role than technology characteristics, such as accumulated global experience, major accidents, association with nuclear weapons, and the advances made by competitors
Summary
Meeting climate targets requires a rapid expansion of low-carbon technologies [1], the feasibility of which is debated [2,3,4]. G., with high growth in electricity demand and high national and in ternational capacity), nuclear power could be introduced into new countries and play a significant role in climate mitigation To contribute to this debate, we seek to conceptually disentangle the effect of technology characteristics from the effect of the socio-economic context surrounding the diffusion of nuclear power. We find that contextual char acteristics such as demand growth, the size of the economy, import dependence, and foreign policy alignment are more robust explanations for the historical trends of nuclear technology introduction than technology-specific characteristics, such as major accidents, global experience with nuclear technology, pursuit of nuclear weapons, or advances in competing technologies This knowledge is critical for un derstanding the prospects of nuclear power, and of other ’market-anchored’ [43] low-carbon technologies which need to diffuse from their ‘core’ in industrialized countries of the OECD to other regions.
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