Richard Lester is the Japan Steel Industry Professor and professor of nuclear science and engineering. Lester’s research has focused on innovation management and policy, productivity, and comparative industrial strategy. His research and teaching also center on energy and climate policy and nuclear technology innovation, management, and control.
From 2015 through 2024 Lester served as MIT’s vice provost for international activities, responsible for providing intellectual leadership and oversight of the Institute’s international strategy and engagements. Lester has also been active in advancing MIT’s efforts on climate research and innovation, leading the development of the Climate Project at MIT and previously of MIT’s Climate Grand Challenges, and serving on an interim basis as Vice President for Climate. Lester previously headed MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. He is also the founder and faculty chair of the MIT Industrial Performance Center.
His most recent book, Unlocking Energy Innovation: How America Can Build a Low-Cost, Low-Carbon Energy System (with David Hart), outlined a strategy for mobilizing America’s innovation resources in support of the transition to an affordable and reliable low-carbon global energy system. Lester is also the author or co-author of seven other books.
I have a longstanding interest in the technological development of the energy sector. Much of my research and teaching over the years has focused on different aspects of this subject. This research is currently concentrated in three areas:
Meeting the three interconnected challenges of global climate change, worldwide energy supply insecurity, and rapidly expanding global energy demand will require the adoption of innovative technologies for energy supply and use on a very large scale. These challenges will be approached differently by different nations. In the United States neither the financial resources committed thus far nor the institutional capabilities for innovation appear adequate to the needs. This project is taking an integrated approach to the design of the nation’s energy innovation system, encompassing the entire complex of incentives, regulations, markets, and public and private institutions within which the development, demonstration, early adoption, and diffusion of new energy technologies takes place. The purpose of the project is to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of this system and to recommend ways to improve its performance.
My current work on this topic — which was addressed comprehensively in a major interdisciplinary MIT study a few years ago in which I participated – focuses on alternative technological and industrial strategies for the civilian nuclear fuel cycle. One area of interest concerns the prospects for advances in geologic disposal techniques for high-level waste disposal. This includes an ongoing assessment of the feasibility of using deep (5-10 km) boreholes as an alternative to mined repository structures for spent fuel and/or reprocessed waste disposition. More generally, my research focuses on the implications of a range of advances in fuel cycle technologies for the strategic choice between ‘once-through’ and ‘closed’ fuel cycle configurations. This entails assessments of economic competitiveness, proliferation risk, and safety and environmental impacts, as well as the consequences for nuclear waste management and disposal systems.
The United States and China are, respectively, the world’s largest and the world’s fastest growing consumers of energy. China’s overall energy consumption is already second only to that of the United States, and will likely overtake the latter well before mid-century. Both countries will face enormous challenges over the next few decades in ensuring adequate energy supplies and in balancing the imperatives of economic growth, environmental protection, and energy security. In China, as in the U.S., innovation in the energy sector will be critical to achieving the goals of economic growth, environmental sustainability, and energy security, and will be a key to reducing the risk of international conflict over scarce energy and environmental resources.
The vigor and dynamism of local economies depends on the ability of local firms to adapt to changing markets and technologies by continually introducing commercially viable products, services, and production processes – that is, by innovating successfully. Not all local economies adapt with equal success. The outcome depends on the capabilities of local firms to take up new technological and market knowledge and to apply it effectively. We are investigating the contributions made by local universities to those capabilities. The locations include both technologically sophisticated and economically less-favored regions. The sectors include both mature and new industries. Some of the locations are home to first-tier universities, some to second-tier universities, and some to no universities at all. A key finding is that the university role in local innovation processes depends on what kind of industrial transformation is occurring in the local economy. New industry formation, industry transplantation, industry diversification, and industry upgrading are each associated with a different pattern of technology take-up and with a different set of university contributions. A current research focus is to extend our analytical framework, which emerged from our studies in advanced economies, to the problem of designing and implementing economic development strategies for universities in emerging economies.
22.812 Managing Nuclear Technology
22.813 Applications of Technology
22.77 Nuclear Waste Management
22.04 Nuclear Power and Society