This grant supports a project by Michael Levy, Director of the Council on Foreign Relations' program on Energy Security and Climate Change, to institute a major research program on challenges facing the United States at the intersection of energy and national security and the policy options available for addressing them, with a particular focus on oil. Funds will support the work of a full-time fellow at the Council, one to two adjunct fellows, and several outside scholars commissioned to do analysis and research. Other funds will support a series of roundtables and workshops designed to facilitate information sharing among the community of researchers and to expose interested younger scholars to work in the field, and outreach efforts designed to educate journalists, government officials, industry stakeholders, and the public. The proposed research agenda will cover several areas, including: ? understanding the security consequences of oil production, consumption, and trade; ? analyzing U.S. policies that could promote reduced demand for oil, including in developing countries; ? understanding major oil producing countries, especially Iraq and Iran; and ? assessing policies that maintain or strengthen the functioning of oil markets and the geopolitics of natural gas. In total, this project promises to make a major contribution to the ongoing discussions of energy security in the United States and should raise the quality of this discussion significantly.

This grant supports a project by MIT's Richard Lester to create a new executive-level course designed to promote the safe and responsible use of nuclear power worldwide and to provide leadership education and training in the strategies, operational practices, and technologies required to develop a safe, successful civilian nuclear energy program. The new course would be built on MIT's very successful and self-sufficient Reactor Technology Course for Utility Executives (RTC), now in its 18th year and offered in partnership with the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations. The curriculum would provide training for senior executives as well as government officials in countries considering building their first nuclear power plants, in countries in the early stages of implementing a civilian nuclear power program, or in countries which are restarting a civilian nuclear power program after an extended period of dormancy. Particular emphasis would target potential nuclear countries in the developing world, including Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Indonesia, Turkey, Vietnam, Egypt, and Jordan. This project represents a unique opportunity for Sloan to contribute to the safe development of new civilian nuclear power programs around the world.

In 2009, the Foundation approved a grant to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to support its work helping the world's nuclear power plant vendors develop a voluntary Code of Conduct. The effort has made significant progress and funds from this grant support the Carnegie Endowment's continuing efforts to advance the project. The Code text now contains sections on safety, health and radiological protection, physical security, environmental protection and the handling of irradiated fuel and nuclear waste, compensation for nuclear damage, nonproliferation and safeguards, and ethics. Drawing, where possible, on existing international agreements and International Atomic Energy Agency recommendations, the Code would pledge complying vendors to a standard of behavior higher than would be expected in its absence or than has been true historically. While the Code, once agreed upon, will be voluntary, it promises to be highly significant in influencing the behavior of power plant vendors. Hopefully it will be incorporated into each company's own code of business conduct, making it essentially mandatory for them. Moreover, the Code's very public nature and the scrutiny of environmental and nonproliferation advocacy groups will help guarantee vendor compliance.

The Trustees will recall that the Foundation funded an MIT study called The Future of Nuclear Power a few years ago. That study has turned out to be extremely influential in the policy arena in the U.S. and Europe. For many months we have been looking into what more the Foundation might do in the area of nuclear energy and other nuclear technologies that would be useful and not duplicative of what other funders are doing. We have developed the following objective: To facilitate the strengthening or creation of institutional arrangements that enable nuclear technology and nuclear materials to be used for beneficial purposes (including power generation, research, medical uses and industrial purposes) with safety and minimal risk of nuclear terrorism or nuclear weapons proliferation. The focus on institutional arrangements would be the special perspective that the Sloan Foundation brings to the issue. There is wide agreement in the world that the rules governing the use of nuclear technology and materials, especially those associated with nuclear power reactors and their fuel cycle, need major revision to minimize the safety, security and proliferation risks intrinsically associated with these technologies and materials. However, there is no consensus among governments or others on what such revised rules should allow and constrain. Governments have been slow to move and international organizations cannot move ahead of what their member governments will agree to. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has been working for a year with the world's nuclear reactor vendors, including notably vendors from Russia, China, and Korea, as well as from the United States, Europe, Japan and Canada, to draft such a voluntary Code of Conduct. Carnegie and its partners have made remarkably good progress but they are far from done. They need at least another year to complete the job. Three more meetings are planned for 2010, one in Washington and two overseas. The estimated cost for the project through 2010 is $530,000. The Carnegie Endowment has commitments to cover $180,000 of this, including funds from the Hewlett Foundation which largely paid for the first year, and a $100,000 request pending with another foundation. They request $250,000 from us to enable the project to move forward in the manner and at the pace all participants prefer. This is an ambitious project and is not guaranteed to succeed. If it does succeed, however, as now seems likely, the resultant voluntary Code of Conduct would be a major achievement.

This nuclear project is the Global Nuclear Future Initiative of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The goal of this project is to identify and promote measures that will limit the security and proliferation risks inherent in the global expansion of nuclear power. Two important features of the project are that it has deeply engaged the U.S. nuclear utilities into these discussions for the first time and it is working hard to understand and incorporate the perspectives of non-nuclear weapons states, especially those that aspire to launch new nuclear power programs. The full cost of the project over the next two years is $1.3 million, of which $1 million has been raised from other foundations and a private donor. The American Academy has asked us for the balance, $300,000 over two years, specifically for the work on multi-national fuel cycle facilities and strengthening the non-proliferation regime.

As part of our exploration of whether to expand our support for research and public understanding of energy issues, we invited the Council on Foreign Relations to request funding for a workshop on energy security related to oil and gas. The workshop will have three important features: It will go beyond the platitudes and misconceptions that often dominate discussions of this subject. It will result in a well considered research agenda for this field that could guide our grantmaking if we decide to pursue the subject further. It will make a special effort to involve young scholars and policy analysts (meaning those under 40) from a diverse set of academic and professional backgrounds as a modest first step in ensuring that new, fresh blood is brought into the field. We believe that this workshop will be very useful and serve as an excellent foundation to help us decide what, if anything, we wish to do further in this field.