Toward environmental sustainability: What role does Russian nuclear technology play?

Abstract

Nuclear energy technology has enormous untapped potential to generate stable and clean energy required to achieve net-zero carbon emissions. This study explores the impact of Russian nuclear technology exports on environmental sustainability in 21 major nuclear power-consuming countries from 2002 to 2021. This objective is realized by using panel inverse quantile and instrumental variable quantile with smoothed generalized methods of moments technique. The estimated result reveals that Russian nuclear technology exports have a significant negative impact on GHG emissions in all quantiles. Similarly, environmental policy stringency has also emerged as an important policy instrument to enhance environmental sustainability in lower quantiles (Qtile-10 to Qtile-50), while insignificant impact is observed in higher quantiles. Furthermore, rapid urbanization has emerged as a major contributor to GHG emissions and environmental degradation, while the increase in economic globalization is instrumental in enhancing environmental sustainability only at higher quantiles.