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Future electricity systems are challenged by deep decarbonization and concurrently increasing demand and there are growing concerns that renewables cannot shoulder this alone. Starting from the proven principle of diversity, we argue for keeping the nuclear option open or even for expanding its use. However, the perspectives are dim for the current technology as safety concerns and social aversion remain as fundamental problems. While looking for future revolutionary safe and more sustainable nuclear concepts we first review the main characteristics of civil nuclear energy, as well as its safety records and technical progress. We then list the key requirements for innovative nuclear systems designs which are less dependent on active safety systems and human performance as well as social stability. This allows us to provide a concept by concept comparison and assessment of existing and novel technologies and designs including different coolants and neutron spectra. The results indicate a high potential for far-reaching improvements compared to most advanced LWRs, although none of the candidate concepts meets all requirements convincingly, yet, helium cooled, small modular reactors (HTR-PM) come closest. We end by stressing the need for future research and development, and keeping human capital and know-how in nuclear energy; we call for an urgent increase in government and international RD&D funding by the order of a few hundreds of billions of USD per year, which will likely lead to breakthroughs that will restart productivity growth in severely affected stagnating modern economies. ; ISSN:2161-6795 ; ISSN:2161-6809

The safe management of the complex distributed systems and critical infrastructures which constitute the backbone of modern industry and society entails identifying and quantifying their vulnerabilities to design adequate protection, mitigation, and emergency action against failure. In practice, there is no fail-safe solution to such problems and various frameworks are being proposed to effectively integrate different methods of complex systems analysis in a problem-driven approach to their solution. Vulnerable Systems reflects the current state of knowledge on the procedures which are being put forward for the risk and vulnerability analysis of critical infrastructures. Classical methods of reliability and risk analysis, as well as new paradigms based on network and systems theory, including simulation, are considered in a dynamic and holistic way. Readers of Vulnerable Systems will benefit from its structured presentation of the current knowledge base on this subject. It will enable graduate students, researchers and safety and risk analysts to understand the methods suitable for different phases of analysis and to identify their criticalities in application.

Introduction -- Strategic energy requirements -- Aspects of environmental compatibility of energy systems -- Knowledge About Climate Change: Significance for Energy Issues -- Economic problems of energy transitions, resource scarcity and climate change in a global perspective -- Cooperation in Energy governance between China, India, Brazil and the European Union/Germany.

Annotation, This volume offers a description of the technical concepts and the legal situation regarding radioactive waste in different countries. It provides a fundamentally informing contribution and considers the ethical, legal and social aspects of this topic

AbstractSystemic risks are characterized by high complexity, multiple uncertainties, major ambiguities, and transgressive effects on other systems outside of the system of origin. Due to these characteristics, systemic risks are overextending established risk management and create new, unsolved challenges for policymaking in risk assessment and risk governance. Their negative effects are often pervasive, impacting fields beyond the obvious primary areas of harm. This article addresses these challenges of systemic risks from different disciplinary and sectorial perspectives. It highlights the special contributions of these perspectives and approaches and provides a synthesis for an interdisciplinary understanding of systemic risks and effective governance. The main argument is that understanding systemic risks and providing good governance advice relies on an approach that integrates novel modeling tools from complexity sciences with empirical data from observations, experiments, or simulations and evidence‐based insights about social and cultural response patterns revealed by quantitative (e.g., surveys) or qualitative (e.g., participatory appraisals) investigations. Systemic risks cannot be easily characterized by single numerical estimations but can be assessed by using multiple indicators and including several dynamic gradients that can be aggregated into diverse but coherent scenarios. Lastly, governance of systemic risks requires interdisciplinary and cross‐sectoral cooperation, a close monitoring system, and the engagement of scientists, regulators, and stakeholders to be effective as well as socially acceptable.