Carbon reduction and nuclear energy policy U-turn: the necessity for an international treaty on small modular reactors (SMR) new nuclear technology

Nriezedi-Anejionu, C ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8329-3408, 2024. Carbon reduction and nuclear energy policy U-turn: the necessity for an international treaty on small modular reactors (SMR) new nuclear technology. Carbon Management, 15 (1). ISSN 1758-3004

Preview

Text 2318952_Nriezedi-Anejionu.pdf - Published version Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

Pressure to reduce carbon emission and meet Net-zero targets is forcing countries to re-introduce nuclear energy in their energy-mix. As a result, many countries have re-classified nuclear energy as a green energy to encourage investments and developments in this sector. Further, advances in nuclear energy technology have led to the development of Small Modular Reactors (SMR), which has continued to stimulate increasing interests from both developed and developing countries. Hence, it is expected that in the coming years, there would be increased deployment of SMR across the globe. This renewed interest in nuclear energy and expected global deployment of the novel SMR, would encounter some legal issues. Therefore, this paper analysed the nuclear energy international legal and regulatory frameworks (relevant nuclear energy conventions and treaties) currently used for the conventional large nuclear power plants (NPPs) to understand how adequate they are for SMR deployment. Various critical gaps were found in the extant laws that could make them not to fully cater for all the peculiarities of the new SMR nuclear technology. This may affect the effective regulation and smooth deployment of SMRs across countries. Therefore, this paper argues that a single specific international treaty on SMR that will cover the regulation of all aspects of SMR deployment, and their peculiarities is highly needed to support countries to justly transition into a Net-zero era.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Carbon Management
Creators:	Nriezedi-Anejionu, C.
Publisher:	Informa UK Limited
Date:	2024
Volume:	15
Number:	1
ISSN:	1758-3004
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1080/17583004.2024.2396585 DOI 2318952 Other
Rights:	© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Law School
Record created by:	Laura Ward
Date Added:	11 Dec 2024 11:47
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2024 11:47
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/52711

Actions (login required)

Edit View

Statistics

Views

Downloads