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Economic infrastructure --- Hungary

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Skeptics point out, with some justification, that the nuclear industry's prospects were dimmed by escalating costs long before Fukushima. If history is any guide, one direct consequence of the calamity in Japan will be more stringent safety requirements and regulatory delays that will inevitably increase the costs of nuclear power and further undermine its economic viability. For nuclear power to play a major role in meeting the future global energy needs and mitigating the threat of climate change, the hazards of another Fukushima and the construction delays and costs escalation that have plagued the industry will have to be substantially reduced. One promising direction for nuclear development might be to downsize reactors from the gigawatt scale to less-complex smaller units that are more affordable. Small modular reactors (SMRs) are scalable nuclear power plant designs that promise to reduce investment risks through incremental capacity expansion; become more standardized and reduce costs through accelerated learning effects; and address concerns about catastrophic events, since they contain substantially smaller radioactive inventory. Given their lower capital requirements and small size, which makes them suitable for small electric grids, SMRs can more effectively address the energy needs of small developing countries.

Climate change --- Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases --- Energy --- Energy Production and Transportation --- Energy security --- Engineering --- Environment --- Environment and Energy Efficiency --- Nuclear power --- Renewable energy --- Water and Industry

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This paper offers a new economic explanation for the observed inter-industry differences in the size distribution of firms. The empirical estimates-based on three temporal (1982, 1987, and 1992) cross-sections of the four-digit United States manufacturing industries-indicate that increased market contestability, as signified by low sunk costs, tends to reduce the dispersion of firm sizes. These findings provide support for one of the key predictions of the theory of contestable markets: that market forces under contestability would tend to render any inefficient organization of the industry unsustainable and, consequently, tighten the distribution of firms around the optimum.

Access to Markets --- Affiliated organizations --- Debt Markets --- Economic performance --- Economic reform --- Economic Theory & Research --- Industry --- Market access --- Markets and Market Access --- Multinational firms --- Water and Industry

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Zonder onderwerpscode: wereldeconomie, ontwikkelingsproblematiek

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This paper complements previous work on the economics of different energy resources by examining the growth potential of alternative electricity supply infrastructures as constrained by innate physical limits. Coal-fired generation meets the criteria of longevity (abundance of energy source) and scalability (effective capability to expand to the multi-terawatt level) which are critical for a sustainable energy supply chain, but it carries a very heavy carbon footprint. Renewables and nuclear power meet both the longevity and climate friendliness criteria. However, they vary in terms of their ability to deliver net energy at a scale needed for meeting a huge global energy demand. The low density of renewable resources for electricity generation and the current intermittency of many renewables limit their ability to achieve high rates of growth. And a significant global increase in nuclear power deployment could engender serious risks related to proliferation, safety, and waste disposal. Unlike renewable sources of energy, nuclear power is an unforgiving technology because human lapses and errors can have ecological and social impacts that are catastrophic and irreversible. The transition to a low carbon economy is likely to prove much more challenging than some optimists have claimed.

Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases --- Economic change --- Energy --- Energy and Environment --- Energy Demand --- Energy Production and Transportation --- Environment and Energy Efficiency --- Equipment --- Natural resources --- Output --- Technology transfer