Changing Geopolitics of Energy Security and the Nuclear Power

Abstract

The changing terms and reference of energy security is redefining its geopolitics. It is no more a geographical construct of buyers and sellers of hydrocarbons. With the signing of the Paris Agreement, the global community has endorsed an energy pathway that points towards the beginning of the end of oil era despite the huge reserves of oil much widely spread than hitherto. The arrival of sources of clean energy in market, reflects a new power dynamics. The ongoing technological innovation with growing digitalization has given the clean energy a leverage moving beyond the desirability to inevitability. That precisely explains the new acknowledgement for the nuclear energy across the globe with a few exceptions. The chapter aims at to capture the essence of the new narrative on nuclear energy by drawing heavily from the literature from diverse vantage points. The message is that nuclear power in contemporary sustainable energy security discourse has acquired its strategic salience beyond weaponisation. Security from nuclear power, today, is seen more as a source of energy and associated use than the weapon of balancing the power. This is evident in the growing size of its market, especially in Asia, where the energy consumption is expected to grow both to meet the needs of emerging Asia and to address the energy poverty. However, without romanticising its profile, this chapter underlines the needs of locating it, in an energy regime which draws its rationale from looking at energy as part of global common.