As populations age, societies must take into account the nuanced needs of different groups. This is the research domain of Cynthia Chen, who joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as visiting scholar with the Asia Health Policy Program during the 2022 winter and spring quarters. An Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Chen’s current research focuses on the well-being of older adults, healthcare financing, and the economics of aging. 

Drawing on support from Singapore’s Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, the U.S. National Institutes of Aging, and the Thai Health Promotion Foundation among others, Chen explores how demographic, economic and social changes affect the burden of care, financing needs, and optimal resource allocation in the future. 

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In a recent talk at APARC, Chen presented findings on gender and socioeconomic differences in aging, exploring the ways in which such society-level characteristics can have major positive and negative effects on the health and well-being of older persons. 

According to Chen, these effects are interconnected with factors including access to effective health care, support systems that enhance function and restrict dependency, and programs assuring financial security and opportunities for older persons to effectively engage in society. “We must move beyond the archaic old-age dependency ratios and metrics, such as GDP, which neglect many of the critical factors that influence societal function,” Chen argued.

Finding Better Metrics for Aging

Gender and socioeconomic differences affect a country's ability to support its older adult population. Specifically, the longevity risk associated with females' longer life expectancy entails different needs between genders in old age. Chen aims to quantify gender differences in the aging experience of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and compare differences in projections of disability and chronic diseases among future cohorts of older adults, including disparities by educational attainment.

In order to gain a more nuanced perspective on aging data, Chen drew data from The Aging Society Index, composed of established and available social and economic measures. The Index provides a quantitative estimate of the degree to which a society is successfully adapting to demographic transformation.

Much of Chen’s time is spent focusing on how to address gender-specific needs when developing policies and programs for aging societies. Chen cites The Network on an Aging Society, which defines a successfully aging society as “one which provides for the general well-being of older adults, is cohesive with minimal tension between generations and major subgroups, productive with opportunities for engagement both within and outside the workforce, and is equitable and secure.” Such society-level characteristics are necessary to understand the difference between successful and unsuccessful policies. 

Chen identifies systemic gender differences across critical domains of successful social aging that favor males. Thus, Chen argues, for many wealth or income-based measures, such as security, equity and productivity, males experience an advantage, which suggests room for improving women’s standing in paid work, job opportunities, and retirement income. One aspect where women do have an advantage is life expectancy. However, they tend to live longer in poorer health, reflected in a lower well-being score. 

Likewise, the gender disparity in cohesion is significantly driven by differences in co-residence rates, which is attributable to women outliving their spouses. These findings suggest that gender-specific needs should be considered when engineering policies and programs for aging societies. 

Varying Rates of Functional Disabilities 

Gender is not the only society-level characteristic that Chen investigates in her resarch on aging. In a recent study, published in Asian Development Review, Chen and her co-authors, including AHPP Director and FSI Senior Fellow Karen Eggleston, shed light on the dynamic evolution of the health and functional disparities of the future elderly.

In order to understand the differences in aging and its relationship with functional disabilities across multiple societies, Chen looked at data from Korea and Singapore. While the two nations have a similar pace of aging, they differ in the rate of increase in functional disability and chronic diseases. This may be due to many factors, including diet, lifestyle, and cultural differences, Chen suggests. Most notably, older adults with high educational attainment are projected to have a lower prevalence of functional disability and chronic diseases, and consistent across gender in both Korea and Singapore. 

The study employs a new model to compare projections of functional status and disability among future cohorts of older adults, including disparities in disability prevalence by educational attainment. These changes will have important implications for social protection systems, including the financing and delivery of long-term care and health care. The study highlights potential differences in the aging experience by gender and education in each country to inform social and healthcare policy and provides a common platform for international comparison to identify and compare challenges across countries.

Studying aging and effective medical care in late adulthood, especially with an eye for society-level characteristics, is an urgent task. Chen’s research complements the existing literature on life-protection activities, further underscoring the importance of investment in healthy aging and control of chronic disease so that the future elderly may receive appropriate care.

The Russian nuclear saber-rattling that has accompanied the invasion of Ukraine represents a level of nuclear risk unprecedented since the end of the Cold War. One wonders how global nuclear politics will adapt to these changing circumstances. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war poses major challenges for several core international institutions and issues, from the upcoming Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference to President Biden’s proposed arms control efforts with Russia and China. Read more at thebulletin.org

A vast array of critical new technologies rely on rare earth metals, a group of elements that are difficult to mine because they are so well dispersed in the earth and often contain radioactive elements such as thorium and uranium.

Over the last 20 years, demand for these elements in the U.S. has increased while domestic supply and production have fallen off. And globally, the supply chain is tightly controlled by just a few countries.

To explore the significant challenges created by this imbalanced supply chain, Gorakh Pawar, a visiting scholar at CISAC, and CISAC Co-Director Rod Ewing edited “Rare Earth Elements in Material Science,” a special theme issue of the MRS Bulletin, a journal of the Materials Research Society.

“With China's rapid rise and the reemergence of Russia as a major power, the global stage is set for multipolar competition to secure the critical materials supply chains and control the rare earth elements (REE) derived high-end products and relevant technologies,” Ewing and Pawar write in the introduction to the issue.

The issue includes six articles that delve into the material science aspects of the rare earth elements supply chain. Researchers from Australia, Germany, Korea and the US contributed articles on mineralogy, separation and extraction, mining economics and the environmental impact of rare earth element mining.

“REE recycling is no longer just a choice, but it has become necessary in a world where resources are constrained,” Pawar and Ewing write.

The MRS Bulletin includes recommendations that the US and other countries can follow to reduce dependence on China for rare earth elements.

The March issue of the MRS Bulletin can be found here. 

A recent study has found small modular reactors (SMRs) may actually produce more radioactive waste than larger conventional nuclear power reactors has drawn reaction from vendors and supporters of SMRs.

Small modular reactors are often described as nuclear energy’s future. Nuclear power can generate electricity with limited greenhouse gas emissions, but large reactor plants are expensive, and they also create radioactive waste that pose a threat to people and the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. In an attempt to address this challenge, the nuclear industry is developing smaller reactors that industry analysts say will be cheaper, safer and yield less radioactive waste than the larger ones.

The study on SMRs noted above was conducted by Lindsay Krall, lead author and a former MacArthur Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and co-authors Allison Macfarlane, professor and director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, and Rodney Ewing, the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security at Stanford and co-director of CISAC.

Summing up their findings, Krall wrote in the study, “Our results show that most small modular reactor (SMR) designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30 per unit of energy generated for the reactors in our case study. These findings stand in sharp contrast to the cost and waste reduction benefits that advocates have claimed for advanced nuclear technologies.”

In a recent interview, Krall, Macfarlane and Ewing elaborated on the fuller context of and industry reaction to their study:

What have you learned from publishing this research?

Lindsay Krall: I would like to emphasize the positive responses to this article, particularly among experts in Europe’s nuclear waste management and disposal community, who found the results surprising and very important. It appears that the article has swiftly brought the discussion of SMR waste issues (or lack thereof) to the forefront and attracted the attention of decision- and policy-makers in certain European countries. This makes me hopeful that the results of this study and follow-up research will have a real-world impact and improve the viability of nuclear energy, at least in Europe.

Nevertheless, it is also apparent that the scarcity of practical expertise in nuclear waste management in the U.S., exacerbated by the 12 year-long absence of a waste management and disposal strategy, may make it difficult for the results of the study to reach policy- and decision-makers here.

Did your research involve contacting NuScale for information or clarifications regarding NuScale fuel burnup. If yes or no, please describe why?

Lindsay Krall: As part of the background research to the study, I attended advanced nuclear events around Washington, D.C., where I discussed the study with vendors, NGOs, university researchers, national laboratories, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The reactor certification application that NuScale had already submitted to the NRC contained much of the information needed to estimate and characterize the waste streams for their reactor, with the exception of the fuel burnup, which was redacted.  In an attempt to obtain the fuel burnup, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the NRC, but the burnup was not released. Therefore, I calculated the burnup as described in the appendix that was published with the article.

Why was the 160 MWth NuScale iPWR design chosen for study?

Lindsay Krall: The design certification application submitted to and reviewed by the NRC provided a comprehensive, high quality dataset for the iPWR analysis. In general, the analysis aimed to assess SMR designs that are undergoing or have undergone the regulatory approval process, rather than hypothetical future SMR designs that might be achievable provided significant technical or policy breakthroughs. Although the industry tends to market the benefits of SMRs around the latter “ideal” designs, these are not as “technologically ready” as the certified designs. Therefore, SMR vendors have levied some unfair criticism against this study, because the article and its accompanying appendix clearly state our preference for NRC-reviewed designs.

Please describe the challenges of completing your analysis in light of the lack of access to relevant design specifications?

Allison Macfarlane: It’s essential that quantitative analyses of waste production and management for new reactor designs be completed.  Our paper was an attempt to do so in an open way, to provide the beginning of the discussion of this issue.  Availability of quality data to do such analyses, especially by independent academic researchers, such as ourselves, will improve public confidence in small modular reactors.

What is your response to NuScale’s claim that its 250-MWt design does not produce more spent nuclear fuel than the small quantities typically observed in the existing light-water reactor fleet?

Rod Ewing: The fundamental point is that the information on the design and operational parameters for the 250MWth have not yet been submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Our understanding is that the application will be submitted in December of this year. When the required data are available, then it will be possible to do the analysis.

What responsibility do the vendors, who are proposing and receiving federal support to develop advanced reactors, have in addressing concerns about the waste and conducting research that can be reviewed in open literature settings?

Allison Macfarlane: Vendors should have first-hand knowledge of all issues associated with their reactor designs.  These include waste production, of course (and all wastes – low-, intermediate-, and high-level), as well as fuel supply issues, supply chain issues, awareness of security challenges, and proliferation hazards (one assumes they understand safety issues already).  Many of these designers are early in their progress towards one day making their reactors a reality and so, perhaps, the blanks will be filled.  It will be important to do so transparently and in dialogue with other experts and the public to ensure public support of this technology.

What were your most significant findings in this research that people and the nuclear industry should be aware of?

Rod Ewing: The most important point of our paper is that with different reactor designs with new and more complex fuels and coolants, there will be an impact on the approaches that are required for the safe, final disposal of fuels and activated materials. Of particular significance is that at this time the United States has no long-term strategy for dealing with its highly radioactive waste streams, even from its present reactor fleet.

What have you learned from the reaction to this paper?

Rod Ewing: That many of the negative comments have been misplaced in that our paper has been taken as being anti-nuclear. Our paper had a simple purpose, that is to understand the implications of SMRs for the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle, particularly for the permanent and safe disposal of nuclear wastes from SMRs. Although the question is a reasonable and an obvious question to ask, I now understand that it was an unwelcomed question to pose. We have been criticized for not seeing and acknowledging the bigger picture – the role of nuclear power in reducing greenhouse gas emissions – and instead focusing only on the nuclear waste issue. I see no reason why a paper about nuclear waste and disposal should also be a cheerleader for nuclear power. These are really two separate issues.

Another surprise was the lack of a technical response. Letters were written to the editor of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (which published the study), but these letters were not copied to the authors. Letters appeared on the web, but were not copied to the authors. This was a public relations response not a technical, scientific response. Public relations may win the day, but I do not think that this builds public confidence in nuclear power. The public has to see that important issues are discussed openly and in a way that converges on solutions rather than polarized positions.

There was one important, bright spot during the past week. Jose Reyes (chief technology officer and co-founder) of NuScale published his letter to the editor of PNAS in the Nuclear Newswire of the American Nuclear Society. We prepared a response to Dr. Reyes and submitted it to Nuclear Newswire, and it was accepted and published promptly on June 13.  This effort to foster discussion certainly reflects well on the American Nuclear Society.

Any other points?

Allison Macfarlane: I would like to emphasize a point Lindsay Krall made: no country has an operating geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel yet.  A few countries are moving in that direction, but the U.S. has fallen to the back of the pack in this regard.  The U.S. is at a stalemate with regards to developing a deep geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste and is largely uninterested in solving this problem.  Since a waste issue essentially brought us the climate catastrophe, is it responsible to ignore the waste problem from another energy source?

The 12th main directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense operates a dozen central storage facilities for nuclear weapons. Known as “Object S” sites and scattered across the Russian Federation, they contain thousands of nuclear warheads and hydrogen bombs with a wide variety of explosive yields. For the past three months, President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have been ominously threatening to use nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine. Read more at The Atlantic.

During a period of greater hope for Russia tempered by uncertainties, President Bill Clinton sought both to enlarge NATO and build a strategic partnership between the Alliance and Moscow. As part of his National Security Council staff, we three worked on the approach that produced the 1997 “Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation.” It formalized a NATO-Russia relationship that we thought of as a potential “alliance with the Alliance” and contained security assurances for Moscow.

While the Founding Act produced tangible results in its early years, Europe today faces an aggressive, revanchist Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions have destroyed the basis for cooperation. NATO should suspend the Founding Act and, in particular, renounce its assurance regarding the stationing of conventional forces on the territory of new member states.

Read the rest at The Hill

In 1999 Nina Tannenwald, a political scientist at Brown University, wrote a paper analysing something she had observed among generals, politicians and strategists: the “nuclear taboo”. This was not, she argued, simply a matter of general queasiness or personal moral qualms; it had important consequences. The lack of nuclear wars in the years since America’s destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she argued, was not simply a matter of deterrence. It had also relied on a growing sense of the innate wrongness of nuclear weapons putting their use beyond the pale.

Read the rest at The Economist