Nuclear Power in Stagnation

A Cultural Approach to Failed Expansion

David Toke, Geoffrey Chun-Fung Chen, Antony Froggatt, Richard Connolly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429802584
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Energy Industry
• Index: Business

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.

1
Introduction

To date, no nuclear power plant that has begun construction in so-called Western countries (e.g. US, UK, France, Finland) this century has been completed; plants are taking much longer than expected to build and large cost overruns are being accumulated. As is indicated in Chapter 3, nuclear construction in the world as a whole has barely kept pace with retirement of old nuclear plants, and the proportion of the world’s electricity supplied by electricity nuclear power was lower in 2019 compared to 2000. The issue of costs is important, since it appears as a key factor limiting the expansion of nuclear power in the West (Petti et al. 2018). The historical importance of nuclear safety issues has been much attested in the past. One much cited study dating back to the end of the 1970s commented:

One of the principal effects of the American nuclear opposition has been the revision of numerous safety standards for light water reactors. … For this reason, increases in the cost of electricity from light water reactors seem probable in all countries which have chosen to develop this technology.

(Bupp and Derian 1978, 170)

Later, MacKerron commented that,

the pressure, even from within the nuclear industry, for higher safety standards continues substantially unabated. … To meet more stringent safety requirements and avoid ever increasing complexity, it therefore seems likely that nuclear power will need to evolve quite different designs which embody more inherent safety features than LWR [light-water reactor] designs.

(MacKerron 1992, 651–652)

It is therefore important to analyse nuclear safety regimes and to examine the association of nuclear safety regulation and outcomes in the 21st century.

Indeed, the design of the type of nuclear power plant now being built in the West, the so-called ‘Generation III’ designs, seems fundamentally influenced by safety considerations (Fischer 2004). Elliott (2017, 2.7–2.8) argues that

the safety problems revealed by earlier models led to the addition of ever more complex and expensive interlocks and controls, plus more backup emergency cooling systems. Attempts have been made to reduce some of the costs and unreliability associated with Generation II reactors by redesigning operations to include passive safety features so that they are ‘fail safe’ with passive safety features. For example, instead of extra cooling pumps, large tanks of water are placed above the reactor to flood it using gravity should power for the pumps fail. As a last ditch safety measure (almost literally), some have ‘core catchers’ built into the basement – reinforced traps designed to stop a melted core from burning through the concrete floor into the top soil underneath.

It makes sense, therefore, to examine how more recent pressures for safety improvements have manifested themselves and, in order to understand the impact of differing styles of regulation, to study this process by examining different nuclear safety regimes. In doing so we focus on six countries that have at least tried in recent years to extend their nuclear power programmes (USA, China, France, South Korea, UK, Russia). This enables us to compare regulations for existing and new power plants.

Hence the overall research topic covered by this book is to examine the role played by nuclear safety in the lack of expansion in nuclear power across the world. As part of this we want to analyse the politics behind this. One particular controversy is the argument about the extent to which stricter safety regulations increase nuclear costs. This is a central part of the book. Another central part of the book is to mobilise political theory to explain the existence and nature of different regulatory outcomes.

In empirical terms we want to look at the extent to which safety regulations can be said to account for greater difficulties in the construction programmes of nuclear power, especially in terms of increased costs. The regulations themselves, of course, do not encompass all potential increases in safety-related nuclear construction difficulties – safety innovation thought up by the constructors themselves may play a part, so we need to try and separate out these factors.

If it is the case that safety factors, whether regulatory based or otherwise, do not explain much or all of nuclear power’s difficulties, then there arises an expectation on us to try and spread understanding of these other factors. Finally of course we want to try to understand the political factors that have led to different nuclear safety regulatory outcomes in the different countries.

Thus, to summarise this discussion, we have an overall research question: what is the role of nuclear safety in the lack of expansion of nuclear throughout the world? This overarching question can be resolved into some sub-questions which we apply to our country case studies:

1. What role, in general, does safety play in increasing nuclear costs?
2. Specifically, what is the relative role of different nuclear regulatory systems and their safety rules in the non-expansion of nuclear power?
3. Leading on from point 2, is there evidence that national safety systems which impose less costly rules on nuclear power are associated with easier paths towards maintaining and expanding nuclear power in such countries?
4. How can we explain, in political terms, the differences between the strictness of different nuclear safety regimes?

Different political and regulatory inferences can be drawn according to different answers. If we find that different national nuclear safety systems which vary in the strictness of their safety rules produce a difference in the ability to develop and maintain nuclear power then we can say that at least part of the reason for the increase in nuclear costs is political. Whether this is something to be applauded or condemned, of course, is a different matter and will depend at least partly on value judgements. If, on the other hand, we find that differences in the nuclear safety regimes have little impact on nuclear outcomes (i.e. ability to expand nuclear power and maintain existing nuclear fleets), then this may be used as an argument in favour of stricter nuclear safety regimes. That is insofar as stricter nuclear safety regimes should not be opposed on grounds of cost.

So, we need to examine differences, and also changes in, regulatory outcomes. Given the politically controversial nature of nuclear power, we need to analyse how political processes shape outcomes. We shall examine relevant political science theories and form some hypotheses to be examined in the book.

Perhaps one of the best cited comparative analyses of nuclear safety strategies published this century was that written by Jasanoff and Kim (2009) who wrote a comparison between civil nuclear power strategies in the USA and South Korea. The paper discusses how the US nuclear power programme appeared stunted by controversies over safety, this being part of a wider dominant American ‘imaginary’ about ‘containment’ of nuclear power. By contrast in South Korea this was much less evident where an ‘imaginary’ of ‘development’ of nuclear power appeared much more prominent.

Things have changed in South Korea, of course, in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident in 2011. However, one striking aspect of this analysis is that it may reflect a more general impression that nuclear power in the USA has been seriously held back by Government policies, reflecting ‘containment’ concerns. According to Jasanoff and Kim (2009, 141) ‘Starkly put, the US “contained” its nuclear power know-how to the point of virtual paralysis’.

Regulation is held by some to be a major contributor to the slow deployment of nuclear power deployment, at least in Western countries, in recent years. Commenting on the financial difficulties faced by the French AREVA company and the Japanese Toshiba in building reactors in Finland and the USA, Shellenberger (2017) said:

what both Toshiba and AREVA failures underscore is that all new nuclear plants, however much they are going to be manufactured, are going to require construction according to the exacting standards of strict regulators, and it was that kind of construction that helped destroy not just one but two of the world’s largest nuclear companies.

One of the key concerns of this book is to scrutinise such a characterisation, or at least as it may be said to apply to the system of nuclear power safety regulation. This will be done not just in relation to the USA, but also other countries. This is necessary because we need to examine whether there is a consistent pathology of what might be called ‘death through regulation’ as applied to civil nuclear power, across several countries. We also need to study the possibility that particular levels and/or types of nuclear safety regulation are peculiar to one country or whether there are similar patterns in different states.

Of course, as the unpacking of our research question implied we should not take the ‘death by regulation’ hypothesis for granted. We still need to examine whether the US and other countries’ nuclear safety regimes have contributed greatly to the difficulties of building new plants and maintaining nuclear power plants in existence.

It may be that the need to protect the public from unintended releases of radioactivity may increase costs over and above what would be the case if there was no radioactivity involved – that conclusion, at least, seems to be self-evident. The nuclear power designers certainly insist that their power plant have robust inbuilt safety measures. What is a matter of controversy is whether the safety regulations imposed by nuclear regulatory agencies act to substantially increase costs over and above what would be the case without such regulations.

Obviously, given the ubiquitous nature of nuclear safety regulatory regimes it is not possible to quantify the costs of regulation in general. There is a common set of guidelines and minimum standards promoted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (IAEA 2020). However, what it might be possible to do, and what is attempted in this book is to compare the relative strictness of different nuclear safety regimes. At the same time we can study the extent to which the different countries have been able a) to build new power stations and b) to keep existing power plants running. If, ceteris paribus, the countries with the strictest safety regulations also have the most difficulty in building new power plants and keeping existing plants running (compared to the countries with the less strict safety regulations) then we can say that a hypothesis that stricter safety regulations lead to substantially higher costs has not been nullified. However, if the reverse is the case, and we can find no clear link between stricter safety regulations and substantially higher costs, then we can say that the hypothesis has been nullified.

The empirical research will focus on a hypothesis that there is an association between changes in regulation of nuclear power and increases in the construction costs of nuclear power. Case studies need to look at Western and also Asiatic countries. According to Jasanoff and Kim (2009) an Asiatic case (associated with South Korea in their analysis) might be associated with a ‘development’ approach. A further hypothesis is that in ‘development’ contexts nuclear power is afforded less independent regulation than is the case with contexts associated with ‘developed’ phases. This difference can be observed over time and also between countries.

The theoretical dimension will be examined in the next chapter. Our analysis follows Jasanoff’s (2005, 21) dictum that culture is important in influencing scientific and technological outcomes. We analyse cultural differences in order to understand differences in technological outcomes, in this case regarding nuclear power and safety. We argue that differences in outcome between the country case studies (including strictness of safety regimes and the political constraints on the nuclear power programmes) are associated with the cultural context and, crucially, changes in cultural context.

However we need a consistent measure in order to compare differences in dominant cultural influence in different countries over different times. Our measure, developed and justified in the theory chapter, is provided through cultural theory as developed initially by scholars such as Douglas and Wildavsky (1982), and later with regard to nuclear power by Baker (2017).

There the conditioning hypothesis is formed that different levels of egalitarian bias (ecological bias in short) influence the strictness of the nuclear power safety regulations – that is as opposed to ‘individualist’ bias which places less emphasis on ecological issues and more on cost reduction. This requires analysis of the cultural context, and the way that similar regulatory issues have been constructed and dealt with as part of the regulatory machinery in different countries. We can analyse the relevant cultural context by examining the extent of factors like anti-nuclear activities, the strength of anti-regulatory activities, and the degree of legal bias towards or away from precaution.

This key discussion concerning the importance of cultural context will be explored more thoroughly in the next chapter which sets out a theoretical framework. It may be that cultural contexts, which differ in different countries, may influence the regulatory outcomes, and this analysis will be linked to discussion of the relative influence of egalitarian activists and the type of political reactions to them.

Method

Evidence will be collected to assess, first, the nature of the regulatory regimes including their institutional nature and safety philosophy; second the outcomes of the regulations as they are applied to existing and new nuclear power plants. This will include whether or not certain technical options have been adopted, and when they were adopted; third the strength of egalitarian, individualist, and hierarchical influences with the political systems that are relevant to nuclear safety regulations.

The analysis of the empirical cases is based partly on extensive study of the rules, guidance, and other documents published by the various nuclear regulatory agencies in the different countries covered in this study. Interviews were semi-structured, but centred on the development and philosophies of the safety regimes, and in particular the degree and manner in which various technical safety measures have been recommended and/or implemented in the case of both existing, new, and planned reactors. The impacts of safety regimes on the practicalities of deploying nuclear power plants are given some priority.

The book focusses on the nuclear safety regulatory regimes as a discreet proposition, rather than on planning controversies surrounding nuclear power. This is a) partly in order to help contain the discussion; b) partly because of an understanding that however planning controversies may affect the timetable of building nuclear power plants, they are unlikely to constitute a major proportion of nuclear power costs, which accelerate rapidly only when construction actually begins and when large numbers of people are subsequently hired for the construction. Moreover, the nuclear safety regulatory agencies in both the US and the UK have taken over more parts of the planning process (such as emergency planning and technical issues) than was the case earlier in the 20th century.

Neither does the book look at issues relating to nuclear waste or decommissioning. Dealing with these issues does involve safety and cost issues, but we set out on the assumption that whilst these matters involve important political controversies, it is the issues surrounding the safety of nuclear reactors that are most likely, in practice, to provide potential barriers to building nuclear power stations in economic rather than political terms. This is because there is a tendency for costs such as decommissi...