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.

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?

Explores the history and challenges of nuclear energy development in China, across five main areas: politics, economics, environment, technology transfer and the nuclear fuel cycle. It emphasizes the political challenges in developing a set of long-term national strategies to ensure speedy, safe and secure nuclear energy development.

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.

Why did nuclear energy policies in France, Sweden, and the United States, very similar at the time of the oil crisis of 1973 and 1974, diverge so greatly in the following years? In answering this question, James Jasper challenges one of the most popular trends in political analysis: explanations relying exclusively on political and economic structures to account for public policies. Jasper proposes a new cultural and state-centered approach--one heeding not only structural factors but cultural meanings, individual biographies, and elite discretion. Surveying the period from the successful commercialization of light-water-reactor technology in the early 1960s to the present, he explains the events that occurred after 1973: France built even more reactors than it needed, the United States canceled most reactor orders, and Sweden completed planned nuclear plants but decided to phase out nuclear energy by 2010. This work is based on one hundred interviews with managers, policymakers, and activists in the three countries. In addition to providing a unique theoretical perspective, it broadens our understanding of nuclear policy by looking at three countries in depth and over a long historical span. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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 book studies the extent to which nuclear safety issues have contributed towards the stagnation of nuclear power development around the world, and accounts for differences in safety regulations in different countries. In order to understand why nuclear development has not met widespread expectations, this book focusses on six key countries with active nuclear power programmes: the USA, China, France, South Korea, the UK, and Russia. The authors integrate cultural theory and theory of regulation, and examine the links between pressures of cultural bias on regulatory outcomes and political pressures which have led to increased safety requirements and subsequent economic costs. They discover that although nuclear safety is an important upward driver of costs in the nuclear power industry, this is influenced by the inherent need to control potentially dangerous reactions rather than stricter nuclear safety standards. The findings reveal that differences in the strictness of nuclear safety regulations between different countries can be understood by understanding differences in cultural contexts and the changes in this over time. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and policymakers working on energy policy and regulation, environmental politics and policy, and environment and sustainability more generally.

The first accessible book to discuss all aspects of nuclear power to help combat climate change and lethal air pollution.

An informed look at the myths and fears surrounding nuclear energy, and a practical, politically realistic solution to global warming and our energy needs. Faced by the world's oil shortages and curious about alternative energy sources, Gwyneth Cravens skeptically sets out to find the truth about nuclear energy. Her conclusion: it is a totally viable and practical solution to global warming. In the end, we see that if we are to care for subsequent generations, embracing nuclear energy is an ethical imperative.

This important book analyzes nuclear weapon and energy policies in Asia, a region at risk for high-stakes military competition, conflict, and terrorism. The contributors explore the trajectory of debates over nuclear energy, security, and nonproliferation in key countries—China, India, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and other states in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Arguing against conventional wisdom, the contributors make a convincing case that domestic variables are far more powerful than external factors in shaping nuclear decision making. The book explores what drives debates and how decisions are framed, the interplay between domestic dynamics and geopolitical calculations in the discourse, where the center of gravity of debates lies in each country, and what this means for regional cooperation or competition and U.S. nuclear energy and nonproliferation policy in Asia.