Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Waste Governance Perspectives after the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
In the 1950s and 1960s, when commercial nuclear energy was first being developed, it was portrayed as an almost miraculous and limitless form of energy that would in the future be able to meet the world’s growing energy demands. While nuclear energy did i
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Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Waste Governance Perspectives after the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Achim Brunnengräber and Miranda Schreurs
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Introduction1
In the 1950s and 1960s, when commercial nuclear energy was first being developed, it was portrayed as an almost miraculous and limitless form of energy that would in the future be able to meet the world’s growing energy demands. While nuclear energy did indeed grow to become an important element of electricity systems in some countries, it has been plagued by many problems and challenges. Today, the nuclear energy industry is facing challenging times that are linked to past failures in nuclear reactors, in energy utilities’ planning, competition from alternative sources of energy, concerns about safety, and the Achilles’ heel of nuclear waste. The global use of nuclear power has been declining since 2006. There has been a drop in both the number of operational nuclear power plants (NPPs) worldwide and in total global nuclear power capacity. The industry’s woes have been exacerbated by governmental announcements in several countries of plans to abandon nuclear energy all together. According to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2012 the industry is “suffering from the cumulative impacts of the world economic crisis, the Fukushima disaster, ferocious competitors and its own planning and management difficulties” (Schneider and Froggatt 2012: 5; 2013; 2014). The factors behind the industry’s problems emerged well before the catastrophic incident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power facility in March 2011. There are many processes which are changing the energy world order dramatically and threatening further nuclear energy development.
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This chapter is a contribution of the Environmental Policy Research Centre (Forschungszentrum für Umweltpolitik, FFU) of the Freie Universität Berlin to the project, “Multi Level Governance-Perspective on Management of Nuclear Waste Disposal. A Comparative Analysis: Actors, Instruments and Institutions” that is part of the inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional ENTRIA project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF/ 02S9082B). ENTRIA is the acronym for the German language equivalent of: "Disposal options for radioactive residues: Interdisciplinary analyses and development of evaluation principles" (www.entria.de).
A. Brunnengräber et al. (Eds.), Nuclear Waste Governance, Energiepolitik und Klimaschutz Energy Policy and Climate Protection, DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-08962-7_2, © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden 2015
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Achim Brunnengräber and Miranda Schreurs
To explain the ongoing decline of nuclear energy in many, if not all parts of the world this chapter reflects on challenges facing the nuclear energy industry, including changes in the architecture of the world energy system, new economic realities, societal scepticism, and court orders and regulatory decisions requiring that solutions are found for high level radioactive waste (HLW) disposal. A brief overview of national nuclear power
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