Post-Fukushima: Regulatory challenges to nuclear power industry

Post-Fukushima: Regulatory challenges to nuclear power industry

Marja Ylönen and Tapio Litmanen

The paper will concentrate on international regulatory experiences, conclusions and innovations after the nuclear power accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan. The aim is to analyse how the societal-institutional nuclear safety regulation systems have reacted to the largest nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and what kinds of societal-institutional learning processes have taken place or are evolving. The study compares the societal-institutional regulation of nuclear power industry in Finland and in the UK.

A ‘dominant co-operative scheme’ (Buchanan 1996) provides an analytical frame to examine the societal-institutional regulation. The dominant co-operative scheme refers to a legitimized allocation of abilities and inabilities connected with socially relevant tasks, with related distribution of material and immaterial goods, rights and duties. It defines relevant knowledge, competent actors and sets limits within which it is possible to discuss about means and goals related to regulation of nuclear power industry. Moreover, the scheme affects to societal institutional learning either enabling or limiting it. We are particularly interested in different dominant co-operative schemes between countries and problems, risks and social tensions that have been externalized or downplayed by those schemes.

The data consist of reports of international organizations (IAEA, OECD nuclear energy agency, EU) and those of national nuclear safety agencies (Finnish Radiation and Nuclear safety Authority and Health and Safety Executive in the UK; as well as interviews with regulators, engineers in nuclear power plants and NGO’s representatives. The method of analysis is discourse analysis.