Donnerstag, 17. Oktober 2024, 18:00 - 20:00 iCal

u:japan lectures | s09e01 | Florentine Koppenborg

Japan's Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance: Why Japan Struggles to Revive Nuclear Power

17.10.2024 18:00 - 19:30

A hybrid u:japan lecture by Florentine Koppenborg (Technical University of Munich, Germany)

Seminarraum JAP 1, 2K-EG-21, Ground floor to the left
Spitalgasse 2, Hof 2.4 (Campus), 1090 Vienna

Hybrider Event (an einem physischen Ort und online)


| Abstract |

The Fukushima nuclear accident eroded trust in the safety of nuclear power plants and prompted anti-nuclear protests. Instead of the nuclear phase out many observers expected, the nuclear safety agency was reorganised and nuclear power goals were adjusted to reduce Japan's reliance on nuclear power to 20-22 per cent by 2030. But why is Japan still not on track to achieving these targets? In this lecture, Florentine Koppenborg argues that the regulatory reforms taken up in the wake of the Fukushima disaster on March 11, 2011, directly and indirectly raised the costs of nuclear power in Japan. The new Nuclear Regulation Authority resisted capture by the nuclear industry and fundamentally altered the environment for nuclear policy implementation. Independent safety regulation changed state-business relations in the nuclear power domain from regulatory capture to top-down safety regulation, which raised technical safety costs for electric utilities. Furthermore, the safety agency's extended emergency preparedness regulations expanded the allegorical backyard of NIMBY demonstrations. Antinuclear protests, - mainly lawsuits challenging restarts - incurred additional social acceptance costs. Increasing costs undermined pro-nuclear actors' ability to implement nuclear power policy and caused a rift inside Japan's "nuclear village." Small nuclear safety administration reforms were, in fact, game changers for nuclear power politics in Japan.

 

| Bio |

Florentine Koppenborg is a Senior Research Fellow at the Chair of Environmental and Climate Policy at the Technical University of Munich. Her research interests address energy and climate policy, particularly energy transitions ("Energiewende") and interactions with climate policy. She has authored several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on Japan's nuclear energy and climate policy. She has been the principal investigator of a research project on "Governing Sustainability Transitions: Technology Phase-outs in Germany and Japan." In 2023, she published her book on "Japan's Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance" (Cornell University Press).

 

| Date & Time |

u:japan lecture | s09e01

Thursday 2024-10-17, 18:00~19:30

 

| Place & Preparations |

LIVE @ Campus of the University of Vienna

Department of East Asian Studies, Japanese Studies

Seminarraum JAP 1, 2K-EG-21, Ground floor to the left

Spitalgasse 2, Hof 2.4 (Campus), 1090 Vienna, Austria

 

| Plattform & Link |

univienna.zoom.us/j/68545155803

Meeting ID: 685 4515 5803 | Passcode: 512250

 

| Further Questions? |

Please contact ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at or visit japanologie.univie.ac.at/ujapanlectures/s09/.

Zur Webseite der Veranstaltung


Veranstalter

Institut für Ostasienwissenschaften/Japanologie und AAJ (Akademischer Arbeitskreis Japan)


Kontakt

u:japan lectures
Department of East Asian Studies
Japanese Studies
01427743814
ujapanlectures.ostasien@univie.ac.at