Energy, Risk and Governance

The Case of Nuclear Energy in India

Catherine Mei Ling Wong

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9783319633626
• eBook ISBN: 9783319633633
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Energy Industry
• Index: Biological Sciences

This book is about how energy, risk and governance are intertwined in the development of the nuclear industry in India and its relationship with the Indian public. It provides a rare insider-view of how the nuclear establishment thinks about risk, contrasted with public understandings of nuclear risk. Energy, Risk and Governance presents a nuanced picture of why nuclear energy is still considered by some as a rational choice. This is in spite of its risks, the ambiguities in both expert and public risk perceptions, and the internal reflexivities that have emerged within the nuclear establishment as a result of the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster that is absent from public discourse. The insights in this book are not unique to India and similar observations can likely be made across the global nuclear industry. Reflecting on what this means for risk governance in practice, this book proposes practical suggestions and some tools that practitioners in the nuclear industry can use in public engagement, risk communication and deliberation at various stages of decision-making.

© The Author(s) 2018

Catherine Mei Ling WongEnergy, Risk and Governancehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63363-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Nuclear Energy, Risk and Governance

Catherine Mei Ling Wong¹

(1)

Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

End Abstract

Energy production has always been a risky enterprise, largely considered a necessary evil for modern life to flourish. Risk was traditionally seen as technological in nature and its control mechanisms located squarely within technical systems. But as industrial accidents started to increase in frequency and magnitude in the 1950s, the cracks in technological systems and the wider impacts on environments and societies became more apparent. It was increasingly clear that risk could no longer be understood in technical terms alone. This was further compounded in the 1980s when governments around the world began to take global warming and subsequently climate change more seriously as a policy concern. Energy production came to be understood, not only as dangerous for individual safety, but also as a threat to the eco-system upon which modern markets, technologies and societies depend. The notion of risk as simply the mathematical anticipation of future hazards, therefore became much more complex and difficult to apprehend. The acceptability of risk and questions about whose and what other values were at stake became a less straightforward calculation of costs and benefits, and a more contested discourse.

It is partly within this context that risk evolved from being a modelling frame for calculating probabilities, effects and adaptive capacities, to a discursive device used to reveal the more ambiguous nature of risk problems and the more complex set of actors involved. The recognition that a wider range of stakeholders needed to be involved in decision-making processes was increasingly accepted but the framework for implementing this process was lacking. It was against this backdrop that risk governance began to gain prominence in the last two decades as a normative framework for integrating a more diverse set of expertise (lay and expert) and values (technical, social, ecological, etc.) in decision-making on risk problems.

For better or worse, nuclear energy became the poster child for the co-evolution of energy production and risk, and all the ambiguities that came with this relatively short history. It is arguably the most hazardous form of energy production, though by conventional indicators, it is the least hazardous given that it has the lowest number of direct deaths caused by nuclear operations. In light of climate change, it has also gained new support even among environmentalists as a short-term solution to growing carbon emissions without compromising economic growth. Yet, the enigma of high-level long-lived nuclear waste remains a problem for generations to come, though some contend that we have even less time to deal with climate change. Indeed, these competing priorities and time frames—set within enduring uncertainties about technological maturity, tipping points, runaway effects, etc.—represent one of the greatest dilemmas of our time even as we run out of time to take action.

It is within this context that this book was crafted as a way to unpack these cross-cutting problems, deconstruct some of the underlying assumptions about the problems and their solutions, and to piece together a different way of thinking about risk and nuclear energy that is less fatalistic, less polarised and more hopeful.

1.1 Nuclear Energy After Fukushima: A Mixed Picture

On 11 March 2011, the improbable happened and the world was reminded, yet again, about the magnitude of devastation that could come with nuclear energy production. In the early hours of that day, a magnitude nine earthquake triggered a 15-metre tsunami that slammed into the eastern coastal city of Fukushima in Japan, knocking out the power supply to four nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Within three days, three of the four reactors suffered a meltdown, releasing large amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere, sea and land. Some estimates put the total number of evacuees at 160,000, half of whom remained displaced in 2017 (McCurry 2017). The latest cost of the disaster, including decommissioning, compensation to victims and decontamination work, was estimated at no less than 21.5 trillion yen (approx. US$188 billion) at the time of writing (Obayashi and Hamada 2016). The Fukushima nuclear disaster put sudden brakes on a nuclear renaissance that had been quietly underway since the early 2000s as countries across the world were beginning to consider nuclear energy as a viable source of carbon-free energy supply in light of climate change. Switzerland and Germany were the first in Europe to announce that they would abandon nuclear energy and shut down their reactors by 2034 and 2022 respectively. In Italy, a national referendum to revive the country’s nuclear energy programme was soundly rejected by the public. Key Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam, which had been in talks with Japan, South Korea, France and Russia to build nuclear reactors, also put their plans on hold. Vietnam, with the most ambitious plan in the region, was looking to build eight plants by 2030 producing 16,000 MW with the help of Russia and Japan but finally decided to suspend the project due to safety concerns and soaring costs (The Straits Times 2016). Thailand had two reactors in the pipeline and was considering four more. Malaysia also had plans to build two reactors on the southern coast of Johor by 2021, while Indonesia had earmarked Banka island and West Kalimantan for four reactors, producing 6000 MW by 2025 (Desker 2013; Velloor 2011). These plans have now been put on hold.

Indeed, the immediate global response and subsequent wave of negative public perception of nuclear energy should have marked the demise of the nuclear industry. But even before the debris from the tsunami could settle, it was back to business for the global nuclear industry. Barely a year after the disaster, licences for two new reactors were granted in the US, the first since 1978 (Black 2012). Europe’s largest nuclear countries—France, the UK and Russia—continued to operate their nuclear power plants and even saw an increase in the share of nuclear energy in their overall energy mix between 2010 and 2015 as did nine other countries.¹ Just two years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the residents of Satsumasendai who host the Sendai nuclear power plant voted “yes” to restarting its two reactors (Associated Press 2014)

Within three years of the disaster, forecasts for nuclear power plant construction worldwide by 2030 returned to their pre-Fukushima level (Schneider et al. 2013). The UK, which had no plans to build new reactors before the Fukushima disaster, started talks with Russia’s nuclear power corporation, Rosatom, on possible joint ventures for new plants (Interfax 2014). In more recent developments, the UK’s new Prime Minister, Theresa May, gave the green light for a new 3200 MWe power station to be built at Hinkley Point C with two French Evolutionary Power Reactors (EPR) co-financed by China.² Towards the end of 2016, anti-nuclear sentiment in Switzerland also started to wane as the Swiss public voted against an earlier timeline for phasing out nuclear energy in the country in a public referendum (BBC 2016). China has more than doubled its number of reactors since 2010 and currently has 24 more units under construction (IAEA 2016b). The UAE became the most recent country to join the nuclear club with four reactors under construction and its first nuclear power plant slated to come online in 2017 (Malek 2017).

If history is any indication of the nuclear industry’s resilience, one could argue that these post-disaster nuclear developments are not surprising even if they may be unnerving. The nuclear industry has seen three other major accidents: a severe fire at the Windscale reactor in the UK, 1957; a core meltdown in the Three Mile Island reactor in the US, 1979; and the complete destruction of the reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine (then part of the USSR), in 1986. These are but the most renowned events. There is a litany of other equally severe, but less prominent, as well as smaller incidents in the industry, some of which were covered up or went unreported (see Appendix Table A.1). But these events did not stop the nuclear renaissance from emerging in the 2000s.

Yet, there is reason to believe that it is not all back to business as usual since the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster. IAEA records show that nuclear energy’s share of global electricity generation was on a downward trajectory since 2000 (see Fig. 1.1) and currently only generates 11 percent of global electricity supply compared to its peak of 17 per cent in 1996 (Ramana 2016: 366). Venezuela, Israel, and Italy abandoned plans to build nuclear power plants, and the two largest economies in the world (excluding the EU), the US and China, reduced their projections for future installed nuclear capacity (Ramana 2016; Yu 2015). Even the IAEA’s own projections for 2030 nuclear energy capacity fall within such a wide range—between 1.9 per cent and 56 per cent—that it offers no indication of where the industry is headed in the near future (IAEA 2016b—News)..

Fig. 1.1

Nuclear energy’s share in global electricity generation, 1985–2013

Source: Ramana, M. V. (2016). Reproduced with Author’s permission.

It is clear that the future prospects of nuclear energy remain contested. But what is a less ambiguous is that Asia seems to be the saving grace for the nuclear industry, with China and India leading the way (see Table 1.1). Even though China reduced its 2020 projections for installed nuclear capacity, the commissioning of new nuclear power plants that were in the pipeline before the Fukushima nuclear disaster has largely continued apace, albeit with some delays. India only very temporarily halted expansion plans to conduct stress tests following the disaster. But barely four months later, the government decl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Nuclear Energy, Risk and Governance
• 2. Risk in Social Theory
• 3. The Making of India’s Nuclear Energy Programme
• 4. Elite Risk Perceptions
• 5. Risk, Safety and Ontological Security
• 6. Public Risk Perceptions
• 7. From Risk Management to Risk Governance
• 8. Conclusion
• Back Matter