An exploration of how and why Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China and India have initiated and developed nuclear energy programs and what challenges they face today. Were the nuclear programmes driven by the low energy endowment, a desire to pursue international prestige, national security concerns, environmental pollution or economic development?

Learning from Fukushima began as a project to respond in a helpful way to the March 2011 triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown) in north-eastern Japan. It evolved into a collaborative and comprehensive investigation of whether nuclear power was a realistic energy option for East Asia, especially for the 10 member-countries of ASEAN, none of which currently has an operational nuclear power plant. We address all the questions that a country must ask in considering the possibility of nuclear power, including cost of construction, staffing, regulation and liability, decommissioning, disposal of nuclear waste, and the impact on climate change. The authors are physicists, engineers, biologists, a public health physician, and international relations specialists. Each author presents the results of their work.

This second edition represents an extensive revision of the ?rst edition, - though the motivation for the book and the intended audiences, as described inthepreviouspreface,remainthesame. Theoveralllengthhasbeenincreased substantially, with revised or expanded discussions of a number of topics, - cluding Yucca Mountain repository plans, new reactor designs, health e?ects of radiation, costs of electricity, and dangers from terrorism and weapons p- liferation. The overall status of nuclear power has changed rather little over the past eight years. Nuclear reactor construction remains at a very low ebb in much of the world, with the exception of Asia, while nuclear power’s share of the electricity supply continues to be about 75% in France and 20% in the United States. However,therearesignsofaheightenedinterestinconsideringpossible nuclear growth. In the late 1990s, the U. S. Department of Energy began new programs to stimulate research and planning for future reactors, and many candidate designs are now contending—at least on paper—to be the next generation leaders. Outside the United States, the commercial development ofthePebbleBedModularReactorisbeingpursuedinSouthAfrica,aFrench- German consortium has won an order from Finlandfor the long-plannedEPR (European Pressurized Water Reactor), and new reactors have been built or planned in Asia. In an unanticipated positive development for nuclear energy, the capacity factor of U. S. reactors has increased dramatically in recent years, and most operating reactors now appear headed for 20-year license renewals.

This book offers a comprehensive assessment of the dynamics driving, and constraining, nuclear power development in Asia, Europe and North America, providing detailed comparative analysis. The book formulates a theory of nuclear socio-political economy which highlights six factors necessary for embarking on nuclear power programs: (1) national security and secrecy, (2) technocratic ideology, (3) economic interventionism, (4) a centrally coordinated energy stakeholder network, (5) subordination of opposition to political authority, and (6) social peripheralization. The book validates this theory by confirming the presence of these six drivers during the initial nuclear power developmental periods in eight countries: the United States, France, Japan, Russia (the former Soviet Union), South Korea, Canada, China, and India. The authors then apply this framework as a predictive tool to evaluate contemporary nuclear power trends. They discuss what this theory means for developed and developing countries which exhibit the potential for nuclear development on a major scale, and examine how the new "renaissance" of nuclear power may affect the promotion of renewable energy, global energy security, and development policy as a whole. The volume also assesses the influence of climate change and the recent nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, on the nuclear power industry’s trajectory. This book will be of interest to students of energy policy and security, nuclear proliferation, international security, global governance and IR in general.

This book focuses on the issue of ‘resurgence of nuclear power’ and discusses the feasibility of nuclear in the energy mix of Asian economies. It discusses nuclear energy sector in detail in the context of India, a country where currently overseas supply of hydrocarbon fuels plays a major role in meeting the domestic energy needs. The book presents an in-depth analysis of nuclear energy policy as well as regional and global politics surrounding the nuclear industry, and the relevance of nuclear energy from the low-carbon energy perspective. To do so, it explores three different perspectives. To start with, the resurgence of nuclear power is discussed from a global energy perspective to understand whether and how it has been increasingly gaining policy attention among Asian economies. Secondly, it highlights the role of nuclear power in Asia and examines how the collaboration with the global nuclear sector is influencing that role. While the epicentre of nuclear power growth can be seen shifting to the Global East, there is a growing need for strengthening the industry, its legal and regulatory infrastructure and knowledge management. The third perspective focuses on the challenges and opportunities for the nuclear power industry and explores, to what extent the public perception is in favor of nuclear sector in the region. The perceived risks of nuclear power, public perception related to legal and regulatory issues, and concerns regarding land acquisition for nuclear facilities are also discussed. The book contains contributions from specialists in the global energy and nuclear sector, and examines some of the most sought-after topics related to the energy policy studies, especially in the Asian context.

The Fukushima disaster of 2011 shook the globe, arousing warm debate and new research within the academic fields of countries in both the West and the East on issues related to nuclear security, public trust, government governance, risk governance and risk perception along with technological and social aspects. The Fukushima incident not only revealed the importance of risk governance in the East Asian region, but also became an important turning point in the restructuring of energy in several East Asian nations. However, the regulatory culture in East Asian countries is by nature different to that of their western counterparts; the history and culture of East Asia has formed East Asian countries’ unique regulatory characteristics. This book aims to establish a risk governance structure for the East Asian region, providing a completely new perspective for both practical implementation and the academic field. It focusses on the problems of risk governance in East Asia. Through a discussion of the risk related issues raised by contemporary globalization, this book outlines the unique form of East Asia’s risk governance architecture. It brings together the work of top academics from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to provide a common picture of how these three countries’ governments are dealing with the energy transition brought on by the climate change crisis. The various aspects of East Asia’s unique regulatory culture and governance models are placed into context, while East Asia’s risk governance theoretical framework is outlined.

Transforming the energy system is at the core of the dedicated sustainable development goal on energy within the new United Nations development agenda. This publication explores the possible contribution of nuclear energy to addressing the issues of sustainable development through a large selection of indicators. It reviews the characteristics of nuclear power in comparison with alternative sources of electricity supply, according to economic, social and environmental pillars of sustainability. The findings summarized in this publication will help the reader to consider, or reconsider, the contribution that can be made by the development and operation of nuclear power plants in contributing to more sustainable energy systems.

Global power is shifting to Asia. The U.S. military is embarking on an American "pivot" to the Indo-Pacific region, and the bulk of global arms spending is directed toward Asian theaters. India and Pakistan are thought to be building up their nuclear arsenals while questions persist about China's potential to "sprint to parity." China remains by far the world's largest market for new nuclear energy production, and India aspires to be on a similar trajectory. Despite these trends, The China-India Nuclear Crossroads is the first serious book by leading Chinese and Indian experts to examine the political, military, and technical factors that affect Sino-Indian nuclear relations. In this book, editor and translator Lora Saalman presents a comprehensive framework through which China and India can pursue enhanced cooperation and minimize the unintended consequences of their security dilemmas.

This publication describes, for Member States, energy experts, the media and the general public, the global and regional history of nuclear power between 1980 and 2005 as reflected in the data collected by the IAEA of the power reactor information system (PRIS) and the reference data series 1 and 2 (RDS-1, RDS-2) on the construction and operation of nuclear power plants. In this publication history is compared with IAEA projections during the same period, and the latest IAEA projections are presented to cover both the past and the future quarter centuries.

This book presents selected papers from the 7th International Conference on Advances in Energy Research (ICAER 2019), providing a comprehensive coverage encompassing all fields and aspects of energy in terms of generation, storage, and distribution. Themes such as optimization of energy systems, energy efficiency, economics, management, and policy, and the interlinkages between energy and environment are included. The contents of this book will be of use to researchers and policy makers alike.