Danish energy policy has reached a phase where the effects of the paradigmatic change from stored fossil fuels to very large shares of fluctuating renewable energy requires fundamentally new technical, political and economic solutions. Two archetypal technical scenarios are the locally and regionally integrated Smart Energy System scenario and a centralized export/import transmission line scenario. In analyzing the competition between these scenarios we applied a social anthropological method of GOING CLOSE to the situation of the actors and the ecological, technological and institutional context. We concluded that a smart energy scenario that can integrate large amounts of fluctuating wind power is optimal, but that the transmission line scenario has the politically strongest supporters and consequently, an advantage for being implemented. With respect to institutional factors, our conclusion is that if a country should be able to change its path against the will of politically strong actors, it is a must to have innovative democracy where the parliament, educational institutions and other institutions are independent of these political actors. In the present phase of the transition to 100% renewable energy we recommend concrete and specific institutional changes both at the EU and national levels.

In this chapter, we discuss the evolution of the field of ‘ethics of nuclear energy’, regarding its past, present and future. We will first review the history of this field in the previous four decades, focusing on new and emerging challenges of nuclear energy production and waste disposal, in light of several important developments. Four of the most pressing ethical challenges will be further reviewed in the chapter. First, what is a morally ‘acceptable’ nuclear energy production method, if we consider the existing and possible new technologies? Second, provided a new tendency to consider nuclear waste disposal with several countries, what would be the new ethical and governance challenges of these multinational collaborations? Third, how should we deal with the (safety) challenges of the new geographic distribution of nuclear energy, tilting towards emerging economies with less experience with nuclear technology? Fourth, nuclear energy projects engender highly emotional controversies. Neither ignoring the emotions of the public nor taking them as a reason to prohibit or restrict a technology – we call them technocratic populist pitfalls respectively – seem to be able to guide responsible policy making.