Nuclear Energy Safety and International Cooperation

Closing the World's Most Dangerous Reactors

• Author(s): Spencer Meredith, III,
• Publisher: Routledge
• Pages: 164
• ISBN_10: 1317700236
  ISBN_13: 9781317700234
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Business & Economics / Development / Sustainable Development , Nature / Ecology , Political Science / Public Policy / Environmental Policy , History / General , Political Science / International Relations / General , Law / Environmental , Social Science / Regional Studies , Science / Global Warming & Climate Change , Nature / Natural Resources , Medical / Public Health , Social Science / Human Geography , Law / International ,

Description:...

Twenty-five years after the Chernobyl explosion, disaster struck once again after a tsunami overwhelmed the considerable safety measures at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. However, Fukushima had in place a solid containment structure to reduce the spread of radiation in the event of a worst-case scenario; Chernobyl did not. These two incidents highlight the importance of such safety measures, which were critically lacking in an entire class of Soviet-designed reactors.

This book examines why five countries operating these dangerous reactors first signed international agreements to close them within a few years, then instead delayed for almost two decades. It looks at how political decision makers weighed the enormous short-term costs of closing those reactors against the long-term benefits of compliance, and how the political instability that dominated post-Communist transitions impacted their choices. The book questions the efficacy of Western governments’ efforts to convince their Eastern counterparts of the dangers they faced, and establishes a causal relationship between political stability and compliance behavior. This model will also enable more effective assistance policies in similar situations of political change where decision makers face considerable short-term costs to gain greater future rewards.

This book provides a valuable resource for postgraduate students, academics and policy makers in the fields of nuclear safety, international agreements, and democratization.