UN-Learned Lessons of Fukushima and Chernobyl: From ANTI-Nuclear Nationalism Towards Nuclear “Renaissance”?

The year of 2011 marks both the Fukushima disaster in Japan, and a one-generation time distance from the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl in 1986. Does it also mark any new emergent – perhaps more reflexive, inclusive and participatory modes of nuclear power in CEE countries? Have these expectations of participatory governance materialized in new structures and modes of more inclusive decision making? This paper examines these questions by addressing the pubic controversies around new and old nuclear power facilities in divergent post-Soviet societies, particularly Lithuania, Belarus and the Ukraine. What are the lessons (if any) reflected in the public attitudes and public policies in terms of participatory governance of nuclear power in these countries, some of which are the EU new comers, whereas the others are still characterized by rudiments of totalitarianism? Have they triggered environmental, climate and energy policy change towards more inclusive, participatory mode stemming from possible social trauma? By contrast, this paper concludes on the basis of empirical evidence from Lithuania and neighboring countries, the processes point to the opposite direction. This direction is geared towards privatization of the public domain, towards new forms of state-private oligarchy in the nuclear power sector, epitomized by the establishment of LEO LT nuclear power conglomerate in Lithuania. Instead of any new off-springs of participatory governance, as paper indicates, there are tendencies of the opposite. Inter-twined with the recent nuclear power “initiatives” by Russia and Belarus, these tendencies could be described as leading towards emergence of a nuclear “renaissance” as some observers have termed it. Is this “renaissance” a reflection of public attitudes towards energy security in the period of economic crisis? Or is a more general tendency of societal neglect of the Fukushima and Chernobyl lessons vis-à-vis globalizing uncertainties in the fields of economy, ethno-centric politics and climate change?