Nuclear Power in Stagnation: A Cultural Approach to Failed Expansion

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.

David Toke is Reader in Energy Politics at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, UK.

Geoffrey Chun-Fung Chen is Associate Professor of Political Economy at the Department of China Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University which is located at Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China.

Antony Froggatt is Senior Research Fellow in the Energy, Environment, and Development Programme at Chatham House, London, UK.

Richard Connolly is Senior Lecturer in Political Economy and Director of the Centre for Russian, European, and Eurasian Studies at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK.