It’s Getting Hot in Here: Climate Change as a Catalyst for Nuclear Proliferation
As the international community grapples with the intensification of extreme weather events caused by climate change, and efforts to curb global emissions have fallen miles short, countries are once again looking to nuclear energy to decarbonize. The continued growth of electricity-intensive sectors, including advanced manufacturing and data centers that support artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, places huge demands on national energy grids. To help meet growing demand, technology companies have made large commitments to future nuclear expansion and brought retired nuclear power plants back online, including the infamous Three Mile Island station. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) predicts that global nuclear power generation will double by 2050, including next-generation reactor technologies, to combat energy insecurity and meet net-zero emissions targets. Four executive orders recently signed by President Trump aim to accelerate the deployment of advanced nuclear reactors, but the orders also contain provisions that could weaken nuclear safety measures.
At the same time, the nuclear nonproliferation regime is fraying. Heightened NATO doubts about U.S. defense commitments and growing security concerns in the Indo-Pacific have raised the risks of allied nuclear proliferation. The global system of treaties, norms, and practices that constitute the nonproliferation regime, centered on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), has decayed as nuclear weapons—and the threat of obtaining them—have increasingly factored into regional conflicts. As a result, a shift to nuclear energy sources in response to the climate crisis may further amplify nuclear proliferation risks if states fail to prioritize responsible export practices.
The Changing Nuclear Energy Climate
The 2015 Paris Climate Accords, adopted by nearly 200 countries and embraced by a host of non-state stakeholders, set a goal to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and keep “well below” a 2-degree rise by achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. As part of the ongoing Paris Agreement process, 20 states (including the United States) recently declared their commitment to triple nuclear energy capacity in the next three decades. A 2021 report commissioned by the United Nations found that nuclear power stations emit lower average lifecycle emissions (5.13 g CO2 eq/KWh) than offshore wind (7.8 g CO2 eq/KWh) and solar energy (8 – 23 g CO2 eq/KWh) sources and can also backstop standard energy grids to address fluctuations in solar and wind energy output. European countries, which have continued to levy sanctions on Russian energy despite the sudden thaw in U.S.-Russian relations, eye greater nuclear capacity as a means of weaning the continent from its reliance on fossil fuel imports. However, the construction of large nuclear power stations equipped with current-generation reactors entails steep upfront costs for advanced economies. Moreover, climate activists have pushed back against the use of nuclear power to meet climate targets, and scholars have cautioned about the non-democratic and colonial associations of the global nuclear industry. As stakeholders debate the right way to integrate nuclear energy into climate solutions, the changing climate is complicating the national security implications of nuclear technology.
Climate Change Raises Nuclear Risks
Climate change serves as a threat multiplier that imperils the security of nuclear materials and imposes challenges on nuclear deterrence. Extreme weather events and other natural hazards can severely impact nuclear energy and security infrastructure. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) cautioned in 2024 that such events could damage systems and equipment that ensure the safe operation of U.S. nuclear plants. Another study commissioned by the U.S National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency tasked with maintaining and modernizing the U.S. nuclear stockpile, found that climate change-related threats could “impact the reliability and resilience of unique and critical NNSA capabilities and infrastructure.” A major Texas wildfire in 2024 forced the evacuation of the Pantex plant, the United States’ primary nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility. Extreme weather events and rising sea levels can also have “mission-altering” impacts on the readiness of each leg of the U.S. nuclear triad—these effects include challenges servicing the Atlantic U.S. ballistic missile submarine fleet, the accessibility of Minuteman III international ballistic missile (ICBM) silos, and risks of temperature and precipitation to the only base that hosts U.S. stealth bombers.
Competition between the nuclear-armed states facing the most severe climate stress heightens escalation risks and nuclear security challenges. In early May 2025, India and Pakistan fought a four-day conflict that saw air, drone, and missile strikes exchanged in the wake of a terrorist attack in India-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Both countries have embarked on nuclear modernization programs to manage vulnerabilities at multiple rungs of the escalation ladder. Pakistan’s “full spectrum deterrence” posture explicitly maintains a low threshold for nuclear use to offset India’s superiority in conventional weapons. India has worked to deploy capabilities that enable it to pursue a flexible counterforce strategy to preempt a Pakistani attack. These developments in nuclear posture create high crisis instability risks in a highly climate-vulnerable region. South Asia faces acute climate impacts, with the region’s complex topography contributing to unpredictable precipitation patterns, heat stress, flash flooding, and rising sea levels. India suspended the Indus War Treaty at the onset of the most recent crisis, and ceasefire terms did not reverse this action. Increased seasonal volatility from climate-induced glacier melt will only further intensify disagreements over water storage and damming of the Indus River Basin, providing a “central pathway” for water scarcity to intensify the bitter rivalry between Delhi and Islamabad.
Water disputes also factor into the complex trilateral dynamics between India, Pakistan, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The unprecedented buildup in the quantity and diversity of the PRC’s nuclear forces has not gone unnoticed by the subcontinent. Worse still, India-PRC tensions have historically erupted into border wars. The latest clashes in 2020 over disputed borders in the Himalayas fit into a broader, tense strategic competition—Delhi and Beijing have vied for influence over smaller states in the region, and India has long been concerned about being cornered by the alliance between the PRC and Pakistan. India and the PRC are likely to expand their rivalry into the Brahmaputra River basin. While water scarcity alone will not trigger a conflict, it will no doubt exacerbate an already-precarious situation.
Small Modular Reactors: A Risky Energy Enrichment
Although the urgency of the climate crisis calls for the aggressive implementation of new energy solutions, the advent of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) may raise global proliferation risks if not implemented cautiously. SMRs have drawn high-profile public and private investments and piqued the interest of stakeholders from domestic technology companies to Southeast Asian nations eager to cooperate with the United States. The benefits of SMRs are hard to deny. Owing to their smaller scale and standardized manufacturing, SMR production can be scaled to lower building times and upfront costs compared to traditional nuclear reactors. Moreover, these plants can serve remote communities, be installed into former fossil fuel plant sites, and are designed with advanced passive safety measures.
However, many SMR designs require high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), with an enrichment level from 5% to 20%. This lowers the barrier for countries that operate SMRs to pursue weapons-grade material and may increase the burden for verification and safeguards measures. Further concerns have been raised over SMR designs that use plutonium fuel, exports of which could raise long-standing risks of diversion for weapons programs. Though the exact proliferation implications of SMR exports are still uncertain, historical exports of certain reactor designs—particularly heavy-water moderated research reactors ideal for plutonium production—have been a key enabler of nuclear weapons programs. This ought to instill greater emphasis on ensuring SMR exports serve peaceful purposes.
A Looming Age of Nuclear Latency
Potential proliferators have also grown more interested in developing nuclear latency. A form of strategic hedging, nuclear latency involves the acquisition of “some or all” of the technologies, infrastructure, and expertise needed to develop nuclear weapons short of a decision to pursue a weapon. Some countries have achieved latency without actively working toward a weapon. Japan, as a prime example, has an advanced nuclear industry and manages a large plutonium stockpile from its civilian nuclear fuel cycle. However, Japan issued its “three non-nuclear principles” in 1967 and strongly pursues disarmament initiatives as the only country to have suffered wartime nuclear attacks.
By contrast, Iran represents an intentional sprint to latency that other states may be interested in emulating. Since the 2018 U.S. unilateral withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which negotiated restrictions on both the uranium enrichment (to acquire fissile U-235) and plutonium reprocessing routes to weapons-grade material, Iran has exceeded the treaty’s limits on installed centrifuges and the stockpiling of enriched uranium. A 2024 ODNI report warned that Iran has accumulated both the “infrastructure and experience” to quickly acquire weapons-grade (90+ %) uranium by further enriching its growing stockpile of high-enriched (60 %) uranium. While the decision to acquire a weapon is ultimately political, statements from Iranian leaders suggest that the regime believes achieving a nuclear threshold status has granted Iran the benefits of nuclear deterrence by engendering greater caution from adversaries and guaranteeing regime survival without incurring the costs of weaponization. Recent shocks to Iran’s proxy-based regional deterrence may further encourage Tehran to use the threat of weaponization as coercive leverage. Iran’s nuclear latency also underscores the deterioration of the global nonproliferation regime and may directly “catalyze” other potential proliferators.
Messaging from Saudi Arabia and South Korea, key U.S security allies, has made clear that curtailing even the nuclear ambitions of U.S partners will become increasingly difficult. Saudi Arabia, which has repeatedly threatened to acquire a nuclear weapon if Iran does, seeks an ambitious civil nuclear program that includes enrichment and processing facilities. The rationale for the Saudi civil nuclear program is compelling: the Kingdom must diversify its heavily fossil-fuel reliant energy sector and requires the electrical capacity required for large scale desalination to alleviate growing water scarcity concerns. However, Saudi Arabia has rejected a “gold standard” civil nuclear agreement that requires a binding commitment to forswear an indigenous nuclear fuel cycle, which has long been regarded in Washington as an unacceptable proliferation risk.
In South Korea, which faces a growing North Korean nuclear threat that has reduced the credibility of the U.S nuclear umbrella despite stronger U.S. security assurances, 71% of the public supports the acquisition of a national nuclear arsenal. South Korean political and military leaders have been normalizing the idea of an independent nuclear arsenal. South Korea can pursue a nuclear latency by developing domestic enrichment or reprocessing infrastructure. Such a move would likely imperil its bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States and cripple its import-dependent civil nuclear industry in the process. Having experienced waves of deadly weather events, South Koreans now view climate change as a threat equal to that of the North Korean nuclear program and has relied on a pivot to nuclear energy to reduce fossil fuel use. A South Korean bomb would trade one existential risk while jeopardizing the country’s efforts to combat the other.
The Geostrategic Competition Angle
The challenge of safely exporting nuclear energy is heightened by Russian and PRC advantages in the nuclear export market and the privileging of strategic competition over nonproliferation goals. Russia and the PRC have full nuclear fuel cycles operated by state-backed companies, which have a decided cost advantage and have contributed a combined 87 % of new installed nuclear reactors globally. The United States also does not have any domestic, commercial-scale HALEU providers—the only source of commercial HALEU in the global market is the Russian firm Tenex. Given that Moscow has shown blatant disregard for nuclear safety by repeatedly attacking and occupying nuclear power stations in its illegal invasion of Ukraine, not to mention its history of nuclear accidents, Russian dominance of the SMR fuel market would be detrimental to global nuclear security. The United States is also not without blame for weakening the nonproliferation system. Strategic competition has led Washington to create double standards. The Bush administration carved out an exception in international nonproliferation efforts to pursue a civil nuclear deal with India in 2008, and the Biden administration exploited a loophole in IAEA safeguards to establish Phase One of AUKUS: equipping Australia with a nuclear-powered submarine fleet.
Nonetheless, Russian and PRC nuclear exports pose major proliferation concerns: both countries have weaker supply-side export restrictions than the United States and other Western democracies and have repeatedly failed to enforce trade control regimes. Russia has “drastically reduced” its commitment to nonproliferation norms, having blocked consensus at the 2022 NPT Review Conference and accelerated its diplomatic and military cooperation with Iran and North Korea. The PRC’s nuclear energy cooperation with Pakistan is likewise inconsistent with its nonproliferation commitments, and despite curtailing its nuclear and missile exports (which involved directly aiding Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program), Chinese firms still supply sensitive technology and equipment to North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan.
Given the stakes, the United States and its like-minded partners must be proactive in addressing the intersections between climate change and nuclear security. With nuclear energy likely to see a resurgence as a decarbonization tool in the coming decades, Washington cannot afford to further recede from the global nuclear market, thereby opening the door for competitors to dominate. Washington must also factor climate risks into increasingly complex regional nuclear dynamics while strengthening the resilience of its civil and military nuclear infrastructure. Finally, recognizing that countries have holistic aims for their national nuclear programs, of which latency or weaponization represents only a part, the United States must engage with allies and partners’ energy ambitions while acting as a responsible, consistent force in nonproliferation to tackle the root causes of their security concerns.
Views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent the views of GSSR, Georgetown University, or any other entity. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
