Synopsis:

Robin Niblett, Director of Chatham House, delivered the following talk in The Europe Center series “The European and Global Economic Crisis”.

With measured optimism about the prospect for a way out of the current Eurozone crisis, Dr. Niblett argues that the introduction of the common Euro, seen by many in past years as a vanguard tool for European integration, is now potentially a functional wedge between ‘debtor’ and strongly capitalized nations.  

Dr. Niblett, arriving directly from participating in the World Economic Forum in Dubai, and based on Chatham House research, described the “perfect storm” of the past two decades of credit-driven growth, divergence within the EU, rising debt-to GDP ratios of member nations especially in the cases of Italy and Greece.  His analysis combines these economic details with the following:

• Demographics – high levels of unassimilated immigrants
• European welfare economies still distributing resources at twentieth-century levels now in the twenty-first century
• The rise of anti-immigrant and anti-free-trade populist parties
• The weakening of Europe’s center parties
• The “Russification” of Europe’s East – especially in recent events in Ukraine
• The stalled integration of Turkey into the EU

The totality of the above paints a grim portrait of Europe under the weight of nearly impossible conditions.   And yet, Dr. Niblett underlines evidence for measured optimism:

• Ireland is making strides to reform its economy
• Ireland’s educated and yet unemployed workforce does have the possibility to immigrate to Europe
• The UK is finally rebalancing its state budget and market liberalization
• France is facing, albeit with massive labor protest, its state budget levels
• Spain will likely turn over its government in the face of its massive youth protest
• Italy is evaluating in its political process a series of budget reforms

These are the structural side of what Dr. Niblett sees as Europe’s tools for recovery.

On the side of European practice, the Franco-German proposals for European Central Bank “bailout funds” include new rules for transparency of internal government operations. This promises innovation to make the EU into an area of political and financial transparency, and to enable the EU to engage in direct investment, as evidence is beginning to show, in the world’s emerging economies.  In this sense, Dr. Niblett sees for Europe a competitive edge over the US in engaging in world markets.

Perhaps most sanguine of Dr. Niblett’s analysis is his reading of the Eurozone crisis as a force to push the member nations of Europe further towards supra-national economic strategies.  In order to participate in the investment in emerging markets, the Benelux countries, not to mention France, Germany, and neighboring European states, are responding to the crisis by considering policy that promotes investment and outsourcing for service-sector employment, instead of export commodities which have been undercut in recent years.

There is a risk, in Dr. Niblett’s view, that Europe will respond to the Eurozone crisis by fracturing into rival “clubs” of small and large or debt-restructuring and creditor nation-states.  But the European nations, especially those currently participating in the Eurozone, have untapped capacities for growth:

• Educated youth
• Underemployed female laborers
• Outstanding higher educational institutions
• Pent-up small- and medium-enterprise markets
• Potential for growth in the service sector labor market
• Room for more tightly integrating and rationalizing the region’s energy market.

Those interested in further detail and analysis are invited to visit the work and productivity at:

The Europe Center, at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies: http://tec.fsi.stanford.edu

Chatham House, at the Royal Institute for International Studies: http://www.chathamhouse.org/

Speaker bio:

Robin Niblett became the Director of Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International
Affairs) in January 2007. Before joining Chatham House, from 2001 to 2006, Dr. Niblett
was the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Washington based
Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS). During his last two years at CSIS, he
also served as Director of the CSIS Europe Program and its Initiative for a Renewed
Transatlantic Partnership.

Most recently Dr. Niblett is the author of the Chatham House Report Playing to its
Strengths: Rethinking the UK’s Role in a Changing World (Chatham House, 2010) and
Ready to Lead? Rethinking America’s Role in a Changed World (Chatham House,
2009), and editor and contributing author to America and a Changed World: A Question
of Leadership (Chatham House/Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). He is also the author or
contributor to a number of CSIS reports on transatlantic relations and is contributing
author and co-editor with William Wallace of the book Rethinking European Order
(Palgrave, 2001). Dr Niblett is a frequent panellist at conferences on transatlantic
relations. He has testified on a number of occasions to the House of Commons Defence
Select Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee as well as US Senate and House
Committees on European Affairs.

Dr Niblett is a Non-Executive Director of Fidelity European Values Investment Trust. He
is a Council member of the Overseas Development Institute, a member of the World
Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Global Institutional Governance and the
Chairman of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Europe.

He received his BA in Modern Languages and MPhil and DPhil from New College,
Oxford.

The events of this year alone have highlighted the impact that natural phenomena (so called external events) can have on critical infrastructure and commercial nuclear power plants in particular. The design of commercial nuclear power plant structures, systems and components has taken into account the effect of loads due to external events such as earthquakes, floods, high winds and tornados. However, the original approach for establishing design levels was based on deterministic methods that today would be viewed as short-sighted and scientifically inadequate. This talk will offer perspectives and insights on NPP design and performance, evaluation of so-called extreme events, and how evaluations of potential core damage accidents are performed. The approach and process of evaluating plant integrity and safety continues to evolve; in part this is attributable to a degree to the vigilance that is maintained by the industry, but is also due to ‘current events’ that demand attention (new science, Fukashima experience, Fort Calhoun flood experience, Virginia earthquake, etc.).

About the speaker: Dr. McCann is currently the President of Jack R. Benjamin & Associates, Inc., a Consulting professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University and Director of the National Performance of Dams Program (NPDP). He received his B.S. in civil engineering from Villanova University in 1975, an M.S. in civil engineering in 1976 from Stanford University and his Ph.D. in 1980, also from Stanford University.

His areas of expertise and professional experience includes probabilistic risk analysis for civil infrastructure facilities and, probabilistic hazards analysis, including seismic and hydrologic events, reliability assessment, risk-based decision analysis, systems analysis, and seismic engineering. He currently teaches a class on critical infrastructure management in the civil and environmental engineering department.

He has been involved in probabilistic risk studies for nuclear power plants since the early 1980’s and is now participating in a new round of risk studies for plants in the U.S. Recently, Dr. McCann led the Delta Risk Management Strategy project that is conducting a risk analysis for over 1100 miles of levee in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta. He was also a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ IPETRisk and Reliability team evaluating the risk associated with the New Orleans levee protection system following Hurricane Katrina.

He is currently serving on 2 National Academy of Sciences panels addressing issues associated with levees and community resilience and the National Flood Insurance Program.

Russia has had a long history of opposing US missile defense activities. Most recently, Russian concern focused on the alleged capability of the "third site" to intercept Russian ICBMs. The "third site" was a plan to place 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland and a large X-band radar in the Czech Republic proposed by the Bush Administration prior to its cancellation in 2009 by the Obama Administration. Now this same Russian concern has arisen regarding phases III and IV of the Phased Adaptive Approach to European missile defense proposed by the Obama Administration. This talk will assess the extent to which Russian concerns are valid in military/technical terms.

Speaker Biography:

Dean Wilkening is a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University and worked at the RAND Corporation prior to coming to Stanford. His major research interests include nuclear strategy and policy, arms control, the proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons, bioterrorism, ballistic missile defense, and energy and security. His most recent research focuses on the broad strategic and political implications of ballistic missile defense deployments in Northeast Asia, South Asia and Europe. Prior work focused on the technical feasibility of boost-phase ballistic missile defense interceptors. His recent work on bioterrorism focuses on understanding the scientific and technical uncertainties associated with predicting the outcome of hypothetical airborne biological attacks and the human effects of inhalation anthrax, with the aim of devising more effective civil defenses. He has participated in, and briefed, several US National Academy of Science committees on biological terrorism and consults for several US national laboratories and government agencies.

Much study has been put into the concept of a multinational or international “nuclear fuel bank,” and in 2010 two such banks became a reality according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative. However, all of the conceptual studies along with the two IAEA-approved banks are not really “fuel” banks; rather they are low-enriched uranium (LEU) reserves. While uranium is a commodity, fuel for a nuclear reactor is a highly-engineered product of which uranium is a component.

It has been argued that because there are more fuel fabricators than enrichers, the enrichment step is the crux of a supply assurance mechanism. This is a gross oversimplification. If one cannot get from LEU to a fabricated fuel assembly, then the fuel supply assurance is not available. There are issues of fuel design, core physics, regulation, intellectual property, and liabilities that could preclude fuel fabrication and delivery in a timely manner. These issues and obstacles will be discussed along with some suggestions about how they might be overcome to provide real fuel assurances.

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Alan Hanson was appointed as Executive Vice President, Technologies and Used Fuel Management of AREVA NC Inc. in 2005. In this position he was responsible for all of AREVA’s activities in the backend of the nuclear fuel cycle in the U.S. Prior to that he served as President and CEO of Transnuclear, Inc., also an AREVA company, which he joined in 1985. Transnuclear designs, licenses and supplies dry storage casks; more than half of the casks in the U.S. have been supplied by Transnuclear.

In January of 2011, Dr. Hanson started a year-long assignment as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University on loan from AREVA. At CISAC he conducts research on the worldwide nuclear supply chain and international fuel assurance mechanisms. 

Dr. Hanson began his career in 1975 with the Nuclear Services Division of Yankee Atomic Electric Company. In 1979, he joined the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria. At the IAEA, he served first as Coordinator of the International Spent Fuel Management Program and later as Policy Analyst with responsibilities in the areas of safeguards and non-proliferation policies.

Alan Hanson received a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 1969 and earned his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977. He also is a recipient of a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) degree from Georgetown University in 2009.  He is a member of the American Nuclear Society and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Nuclear energy is politically sensitive. For its proponents, nuclear energy is clean and highly efficient and indeed is the only alternative to fossil fuels in providing a base supply of electricity. For its opponents, nuclear energy is nothing but trouble, a symbol of war and weaponry par excellence, and one that creates environmental problems for mankind today and in the future. What is remarkable in this highly emotional debate is the general division between developed and developing countries. Asian and Gulf states are more active than many in other continents in expanding or developing their nuclear energy capacities. China is leading this expansion with 27 reactors under construction now.

Nuclear development in China highlights a series of objectives many developing countries try to balance – energy and economy, energy and development, energy and environment, energy and security, and the need for both clean energy and adequate and reliable energy supplies. It tells a counterintuitive story about Chinese politics – a single-party authoritarian political system with an extremely fragmented institutional structure in nuclear energy policy making, implementation and regulation and with highly competitive market forces in play. It provides a cautionary tale about the Chinese as well as global nuclear future. This paper discusses the challenges of nuclear energy development, using China as an example. It asks who drives it, what technology is selected and adopted, how human capital is developed, what the rules of the games are, and more importantly, which institutions are responsible for issuing licenses, regulating standards, and overseeing the compliance, and what forms of regulation do they use. At the core of these questions is if and how countries can ensure safe, secure and sustainable nuclear development.

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Xu Yi-chong is a research professor of politics and public policy at Griffith University. Before joining Griffith University in January 2007, Xu was professor of political science at St Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada. She is author of The Politics of Nuclear Energy in China (2010); Electricity Reform in China, India and Russia: The World Bank Template and the Politics of Power (2004); Powering China: Reforming the electric power industry in China (2002); co-author of Inside the World Bank: Exploding the Myth of the Monolithic Bank (with Patrick Weller 2009) and The Governance of World Trade: International Civil Servants and the GATT/WTO, (with Patrick Weller 2004); and editor of Nuclear Energy Development in Asia (2011) and The Political Economy of Sovereign Wealth Funds (2010). All these projects were supported by the research grants from either Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) or Australian Research Council.