The United States has a growing inventory of spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants that continues to accumulate at reactor sites around the country.

In addition, the legacy waste from U.S. defense programs remains at Department of Energy sites around the country, mainly at Hanford, WA, Savannah River, SC, and at Idaho National Laboratory.

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“The processing and handling of waste is slow to stopped and in this environment the pressure has become very great to do something.”

Currently, more than seventy thousand metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from civilian reactors is sitting in temporary aboveground storage facilities spread across 35 states, with many of the reactors that produced it shut down.  And U.S. taxpayers are paying the utilities billions of dollars to keep it there.

Meanwhile, the deep geologic repository where all that waste was supposed to go, in Yucca Mountain Nevada, is now permanently on hold, after strong resistance from Nevada residents and politicians led by U.S. Senator Harry Reid.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad New Mexico, the world’s first geologic repository for transuranic waste, has been closed for over a year due to a release of radioactivity.

And other parts of the system, such as the vitrification plant at Hanford and the mixed oxide fuel plant at Savannah River , SC, are way behind schedule and over budget.

It’s a growing problem that’s unlikely to change this political season.

“The chances of dealing with it in the current Congress are pretty much nil, in my view,” said former U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM).

“We’re not going to see a solution to this problem this year or next year.”

The issue in Congress is generally divided along political lines, with Republicans wanting to move forward with the original plan to build a repository at Yucca Mountain, while Democrats support the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future to create a new organization to manage nuclear waste in the U.S. and start looking for a new repository location using an inclusive, consent-based process.

“One of the big worries that I have with momentum loss is loss of nuclear competency,” said David Clark, a Fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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Meanwhile, other countries are moving ahead with plans for their own repositories, with Finland and Sweden leading the pack, leaving the U.S. lagging behind.

So Ewing decided to convene a series of high-level conferences, where leading academics and nuclear experts from around the world can discuss the issues in a respectful environment with a diverse range of stakeholders – including former politicians and policy makers, scientists and representatives of Indian tribes and other effected communities.

“For many of these people and many of these constituencies, I’ve seen them argue at length, and it’s usually in a situation where a lot seems to be at stake and it’s very adversarial,” said Ewing.

“So by having the meeting at Stanford, we’ve all taken a deep breath, the program is frozen in place, nothing’s going to go anywhere tomorrow, we have the opportunity to sit and discuss things. And I think that may help.”

Former Senator Bingaman said he hoped the multidisciplinary meetings, known at the “Reset of Nuclear Waste Management Strategy and Policy Series”, would help spur progress on this pressing problem.

“There is a high level of frustration by people who are trying to find a solution to this problem of nuclear waste, and there’s no question that the actions that we’ve taken thus far have not gotten us very far,” Bingaman said.

“I think that’s why this conference that is occurring is a good thing, trying to think through what are the problems that got us into the mess we’re in, and how do we avoid them in the future.”

The latest conference, held earlier this month, considered the question of how to structure a new nuclear waste management organization in the U.S.

Speakers from Sweden, Canada and France brought an international perspective and provided lessons learned from their countries nuclear waste storage programs.

“The other…major programs, France, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Canada, they all reached a crisis point, not too different from our own,” said Ewing.

“And at this crisis point they had to reevaluate how they would go forward. They each chose a slightly different path, but having thought about it, and having selected a new path, one can also observe that their programs are moving forward.”

France has chosen to adopt a closed nuclear cycle to recycle spent fuel and reuse it to generate more electricity.

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“We also reduce the toxicity because…we are removing the plutonium. And finally, we are conditioning the final waste under the form of nuclear glass, the lifetime of which is very long, in the range of a million years in repository conditions.”

Clark said that Stanford was the perfect place to convene a multidisciplinary group of thought leaders in the field who could have a real impact on the future of nuclear waste storage policy.

“The beauty of a conference like this, and holding it at a place like Stanford University and CISAC, is that all the right people are here,” he said.

“All the people who are here have the ability to influence, through some level of authority and scholarship, and they’ll be able to take the ideas that they’ve heard back to their different offices and different organizations.  I think it will make a difference, and I’m really happy to be part of it.”

Ewing said it was also important to include students in the conversation.

“There’s a next generation of researchers coming online, and I want to save them the time that it took me to realize what the problems are,” Ewing said.

“By mixing students into this meeting, letting them interact with all the parties, including the distinguished scientists and engineers, I’m hoping it speeds up the process.”

Professor Ewing is already planning his next conference, next March, which will focus on the consent-based process that will be used to identify a new location within the U.S. for a repository.

Russ Feingold, the former U.S. senator perhaps best known for pushing campaign finance reform, will spend the spring quarter at Stanford lecturing and teaching.

Feingold will be the Payne Distinguished Lecturer and will be in residence at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies while teaching and mentoring graduate students in the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies and the Stanford Law School.

Feingold was recently the State Department’s  special envoy to the Great Lakes Region of Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He will bring his knowledge and longstanding interest in one of the most challenging, yet promising, places in Africa to campus with the cross-listed IPS and Law School course, “The Great Lakes Region of Africa and American Foreign Relations: Policy and Legal Implications of the Post-1994 Era.”

Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat who served three terms in the Senate between 1993 and 2011, co-sponsored the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Better known as the McCain-Feingold Act, the legislation regulated the roles of soft money contributions and issue ads in national elections.

Introduction and Contribution

Nearly half of the world (46%) lives in authoritarian regimes that hold regular elections — compared to 28% who live in autocracies without elections and 26% who live under democracy. In these “electoral autocracies,” the ruling party can theoretically lose power, but its ability to repress and co-opt its opponents makes defeat unlikely. Incumbent executives and parties in electoral autocracies have become increasingly sophisticated in their repressive techniques and increasingly connected to other regimes that share similar fears of democracy. “How can electoral authoritarianism be resisted?” is thus a pressing question for domestic opposition parties and civil society organizations (CSOs) as well as international actors seeking to promote democracy, including governments, nonprofits, think tanks, and academics. 

In “Opposition strategies and electoral challenges under autocracy,” Oren Samet analyzes five strategies opposition parties use to fight electoral authoritarianism during campaigns, on election day, and after polls have closed. These are: joining multiparty coalitions, strengthening their party organization, mobilizing mass protests, boycotting elections, and seeking international assistance. Samet shows that each strategy entails tradeoffs, increasing opposition competitiveness while making authoritarian repression more likely or efficient. For example, joining a multiparty coalition can both increase the incumbent’s likelihood of defeat and increase his propensity to repress — insofar as he perceives the opposition as popular and threatening.

Samet offers several prescriptions for international democracy promoters. First, they must collaborate with domestic opposition parties, because only they — and not CSOs — can win elections. Yet many international actors avoid this approach; for instance, some opposition parties may care more about power than democracy, or collaborating with them may invite criticism that democracy promotion is partisan. While these risks cannot be ignored, neither can political parties.

A second prescription follows from the fact that oppositions have at least five tools at their disposal: there can be no single “best practice” in democracy promotion; it requires flexibility, adaptability, and an integrated approach. Finally, because autocrats continue to become more sophisticated, democracy promoters must take steps to prepare for the repression of their partners. 

Five Approaches and Their Pitfalls

Otherwise effective strategies for winning democratic elections — such as running savvy campaigns on primetime television that are informed by public opinion polling — will not work for opposition parties under electoral autocracy. This is because the system is structurally biased toward incumbents. As such, one common approach has been for individual opposition parties to join together in a coalition: sharing policy platforms, endorsing joint candidates, and merging their party organizations. And indeed, multiparty coalitions are statistically associated with higher vote shares and a higher likelihood that autocrats are defeated. At the same time, however, such coalitions are difficult to form and sustain due to ideological differences and polarization. In especially repressive electoral autocracies, such as Ethiopia or Cambodia, incumbent parties are often able to neutralize or eliminate coalitions. Finally, when coalitions pose a serious challenge on election day but without winning, autocrats may repress even harder.

A second strategy involves strengthening party organization, for example, by improving its geographic reach or recruiting more professional candidates. These efforts can increase competitiveness and popular appeal, but they risk providing the incumbent with a large amount of information that he can use to more efficiently target his opponents. This includes formal lists of members, candidates, and party branch locations. Meanwhile, more organized opposition parties may inadvertently legitimize the system by affording it some semblance of democracy.

Encouraging mass protests is a third strategy available to opposition parties. As the number of protesters grows, authoritarian repression becomes more costly and more likely to backfire, while the incumbent’s allies become more likely to defect and join the opposition. Parties help with this process by translating protester demands into coherent party platforms. However, and especially after the 2010-12 Arab Uprisings, electoral authoritarian regimes have become highly sensitive to and ready to combat protests. This may be accomplished via surveillance or assistance from powerful third parties such as China or Russia.

A fourth, common strategy has been for parties to boycott the autocrat’s electoral facade. Doing so signals to the international community that the playing field is skewed and the system illegitimate. Yet boycotts can lead to missed opportunities for the opposition to build electoral strength, influence policy change as legislative minorities, or monitor the autocrat from inside government. In addition, they rob oppositions of the chance to take advantage of the autocrat’s miscalculations, which may even lead to his defeat. 

Finally, opposition parties can reach out to international actors for support. This may involve requesting that they sanction the regime or intervene in the name of democracy. International pressure can indeed encourage political openings and is especially useful for oppositions with low visibility. However, autocrats are adept at demonizing those who use this strategy as agents of malign foreign influence. These appeals can strengthen the autocrat’s domestic support base among those who see him as protecting the nation. In all, these tradeoffs suggest that effective democracy promotion requires a deep understanding of the political context in which oppositions operate.

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.

Introduction and Contribution:

Indigenous peoples constitute at least 8% of Latin America's population, well over 40 million in total, depending on whether one measures this by self-identification or proficiency in an indigenous language. Over the five centuries since Latin America’s colonization, indígenas have been subjected to myriad injustices, from genocide and linguicide to dispossession, forced assimilation, and political exclusion. However, during the last two decades, indigenous identities have entered Latin America’s political mainstream, indigenous candidates and parties have grown in popularity, and traditional political debates — for example, over fair economic development — have been increasingly addressed using the language of indigenous rights and autonomy.

Social scientific knowledge about indigenous peoples has improved considerably, and in ways that reflect many of these ongoing processes. Yet gaps persist, partly owing to the neglect of scholarship written by indigenous peoples (and in non-English languages) as well as the shoehorning of indigenous life into categories such as “peasants” or “poor masses.” The time is thus ripe for a critical examination.

In “Original Peoples Count,” Alberto Díaz-Cayeros and Irma Alicia Velasquez Nimatuj systematically review current scholarship on indigenous peoples in Latin America. The authors demonstrate how much has been learned about trends in indigenous language use, the virtues of indigenous political institutions, the dangers of indigenous environmental activism, and much more. Looking ahead, the authors call for greater attention to the threats posed by the rapid growth of artificial intelligence, as well as to the persistence of disparities in indigenous health outcomes.

Counting Indigenous Peoples and Languages:

One important cause of indigenous marginalization is that many colonial and post-colonial governments simply refused to recognize their existence. Nation-building elites privileged Spanish and Portuguese and made deliberate choices about which identities to include in censuses. Relatedly, the very category “indigenous” reflects colonial efforts to homogenize millions of diverse peoples, and many indigenous peoples do not identify as such. There is tremendous variation in terms of the languages that indigenous peoples speak and the demographics of where they live. Not only do these territories cut across national borders, but many indigenous peoples have a distinctive understanding of borders, as representing sacred — rather than merely administrative — divisions.
 

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Figure 2. Unceded Territories of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America
 

Despite the visibility of language loss and extinction, panel data collected since the 1990s paint a more nuanced picture. Diaz-Cayeros and Nimatuj highlight several important trends along these lines. For one, the number of indigenous language speakers has increased across every age cohort. Second, there was a dramatic increase in indigenous language speakers around age 40 in the 2000s, followed by an increase in speakers under 40 in the 2010s. What this suggests is not that more people are learning indigenous languages, but that more speakers are willing to reveal their identities to surveyors. The latter is itself a political phenomenon that reflects growing indigenous consciousness.
 

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Figure 1. Identity Revelation in Latin American Census Data
 

Indigenous Politics and Economics:

Over the last two decades, indigenous politics has moved from street protests to the highest levels of government, with Evo Morales winning Bolivia’s presidency. Yet these improvements in indigenous peoples’ descriptive representation have not always produced substantive reductions in poverty and discrimination. This is one reason why indigenous parties cannot automatically rely on indigenous vote blocs; understanding why these parties enjoy more or less consistent support is a key question for future research.

Outside of mainstream politics, traditional institutions such as indigenous assemblies have grown in number and prominence. Scholars have documented cases where these institutions exhibited highly democratic properties. These include high competitiveness and turnout, which arguably produce greater accountability to ordinary people. Indigenous governance may thus provide insights into how Latin American politics can become more encompassing and participatory, moving beyond simply electing and removing candidates once every few years.

In terms of socioeconomic trends, indigenous rates of poverty, infant mortality, and school enrollment lag behind the rest of the population. These outcomes are usually worse for women, partly owing to the persistence of indigenous patriarchal norms. Meanwhile, indigenous economies have been substantially reshaped by large-scale industrial activity, especially mining and logging. The authors caution, however, against assuming that indigenous peoples uniformly oppose these activities. At the same time, local efforts to rein in industrial activity are often met with extremely punitive state action — leading to the imprisonment or death of key indigenous leaders. Latin America is now the world’s most dangerous region for environmental activism.

Directions for Future Research:

One likely cause of indigenous marginality is ‘historical trauma,’ or rather the ways that colonialism and post-colonial discrimination have transmitted social and psychological harm across generations. The authors call for greater attention to the varied political effects of historical trauma, including depressed indigenous participation, lower levels of trust in political institutions, and worse life outcomes. Similarly, despite visible efforts by Latin American governments to undertake health interventions, substantial gaps persist within indigenous communities, particularly in mental health.

Another topic for further research concerns the lives of indigenous youth, especially those who migrate to urban centers for work. Migration generates multiple overlapping challenges, including cultural adjustment, political marginality, and economic precarity. Finally, the growth of ‘digital colonialism’ demands greater attention. Artificial intelligence has generated a host of injustices, such as environmental degradation, algorithmic discrimination against indigenous languages, and the nonconsensual extraction of indigenous knowledge. The authors close by noting that indigenous peoples may use AI to make their histories ever more visible. In all, “Original Peoples Count” is an ambitious review that will likely inform the next generation of scholarship on indigenous politics.

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.