From 2001 to 2003, an interdisciplinary group of MIT faculty examined the role of nuclear power in meeting the mid-century electricity needs of the United States and the rest of the world, given the increasing likelihood that constraints on carbon emissions would be adopted because of concern about global climate change. The resulting MIT study on The Future of Nuclear Power, released in 2003, has stimulated worldwide debate on the best way forward for nuclear power.
The study, addressed to government, industry, and academic leaders, discusses the interrelated technical, economic, environmental, and political challenges facing a significant increase in global nuclear power utilization over the next half century and what might be done to overcome those challenges. Our examination of the consequences for economics, safety, waste disposal, and nuclear weapons proliferation of alternative pathways for nuclear energy development led us to recommend that priority should be given to the once-through fuel cycle for the next few decades.
As a follow-on to the nuclear power study, a second MIT faculty group is now engaged in a multidisciplinary study of the technical, institutional, and public policy factors bearing on the future of coal in a greenhouse gas constrained world. Our primary focus is on a world with significant constraints on carbon emissions and on technologies that can make coal use compatible with such constraints.
The purpose of the MIT coal study is produce an integrated set of policy recommendations for actions that, if adopted, will enable coal to continue to play an important role in the production of electricity over the next half century, while constraining the growth of greenhouse gas concentrations.