Funds from this grant support a collaboration between Alan Krupnick and colleagues at Resources for the Future (RFF), and a team from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), to develop suggested guidelines on effective ways to address high-priority pathways associated with shale gas development. Starting with a list of 15 risk pathways all identified as high priority by a diverse selection of knowledgeable industry insiders, environmentalists, and regulators, RFF will collect and integrate information on risks, mitigation costs, regulation, and best practices for each pathway, culminating in a cost-benefit and modeling analysis of regulatory options for addressing the least controversial, most pressing risks associated with shale gas extraction. EDF will then involve a small group of motivated leaders from industry, nongovernmental organizations, regulatory bodies, and academia in a sustained attempt to build a consensus around guidelines for risk mitigation in shale gas development that will aim at improving both government regulation and industry practices. Additional grant funds support outreach and educational efforts, including outreach through websites, newsletters, blogs, popular articles, discussion papers, conference presentations, and peer-reviewed articles.

This grant supports the work of Dr. Kenneth Medlock at Rice University to understand how new and proposed federal and local regulations will influence natural gas resource development and pricing in the United States. Medlock will identify the range of federal, state, and local policy options being proposed by specific stakeholders, legislators, and special interest groups regarding shale gas production in the United States. He will then specify several potential regulatory scenarios for analysis. Using the Rice World Gas Trade Model, he will then quantify the impact of proposed changes in regulation and taxation on the pace and scope of natural gas resource development and on the price of natural gas in different regions of the world. This analysis will allow him to highlight the regional and global market implications and the international geopolitical implications of the potential policies. Grant funds will support an initial exploratory workshop to identify relevant policies; analysis and modelling; an interim workshop; and a major capstone conference once his analysis is completed. Written products will include two to three academic papers, six to eight economic modeling projections with regional focus, a study monograph, and a policy white paper.

Since 2009, with support from the Sloan and Hewlett Foundation’s, the Arius Association has been working to promote regional nuclear waste repositories outside of Europe. If such repositories could be brought into existence, they would result in the centralized disposal of dangerous nuclear wastes in a manner that would be more cost-effective, safe, and secure (from both a nonproliferation and dirty bomb perspective) than if each country with a small nuclear power program had responsibility for disposing of its own high-level nuclear waste. Funds from this grant provide support for Arius’ continued work on this issue, including an expansion of the scope of their efforts to include discussion of regional repositories for radioactive wastes from universities, hospitals, and industry. Supported activities over the next two years include a series of workshops in Arab regions and in Asia; the production of a draft constitution and work program for a regional nuclear repository organization; development of an IAEA report on multinational nuclear waste repositories; and a series of high-level papers aimed at specialists and policymakers.

This grant supports activities in support of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' (AAAS) Global Nuclear Future Initiative, an international effort that focuses on increasing the security of nuclear materials, strengthening the global nuclear regime, and solving the unresolved problem of what to do with spent nuclear reactor fuel. Led by Stephen Miller, Director of Harvard University's International Security Program, the project aims to build international consensus around a series of prescriptions for strengthening nuclear security, including principles governing the development of regional nuclear storage facilities; best practices governing contracts between suppliers, customers, and government entities; and the proper arrangements connecting nuclear fuel storage and disposal. Supported activities under this grant include the convening of regional meetings of key stakeholders in government, industry, and non-governmental organizations and the commissioning of conference presentations and publishable research papers by respected experts, academics, and practitioners in the field.

The foundational treaty of the global nuclear order, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), does not define what constitutes a nuclear weapon and therefore what activities, technologies, and materials should be regarded as evidence that a state is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. This lack of definition exacerbates the nonproliferation challenge of distinguishing between legitimate nuclear activities (be they peaceful or military applications such as naval propulsion) and illegitimate ones (namely, those oriented toward nuclear weapons). This challenge, in turn, exacerbates the difficulty of promoting the peaceful spread of nuclear energy while, at the same time, preventing weapons proliferation. This grant supports an initiative by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to build an international consensus around how to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate nuclear activity. The Carnegie team will convene policymakers, regulators, and technical personnel from the five permanent member countries of the UN Security Council - China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States - for a series of non-political meetings to discuss national perspectives on what constitutes illegitimate nuclear activity, weigh the costs and benefits of potential frameworks, and identify areas for further technical analysis.

This grant to the University of Colorado at Denver supports efforts by Tanya Heikkila and Christopher Weible to study the politics of shale gas development in the United States. Using a wide-ranging series of interviews, Heikkila, Wieble and their team will construct a map of the political actors and influencers active in the recent development of the Marcellus, Barnett, and Mancos shale formations with the aim of understanding the politics of shale gas development. Issues to be addressed include how different interest groups frame the issue of shale gas development, how they use and deploy scientific information, what media and engagement strategies they use, and how they interact with other interest groups and with policymakers and to what effect. If successful, Hikkila and Weible's work could potentially lead to a deeper understanding of how the politics of shale gas development is evolving both nationally and regionally, an understanding that will be of value to all parties involved in shale gas development: industry, advocacy groups, regulators, policymakers, and the public.

With Sloan Foundation support, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has brokered the development of a voluntary agreement among nuclear reactor vendors to abide by an industry-wide set of principles meant to increase the safety and security of nuclear facilities. This grant funds a year of follow-up activities subsequent to the formal adoption of the principles on September 15, 2011. Funded activities include briefing governments on the final text of the Principles of Conduct; conducting outreach to reactor operators, the World Association of Nuclear Operators, and other stakeholders encouraging them to adopt and abide by the principles; convening a meeting a review meeting to monitor implementation of the procedures set out in the Principles; developing processes to enable sharing of best practices across the industry; and working with nuclear reactor vendors to create an independent secretariat.