Nuclear Energy Safety and International Cooperation

<p>Twenty-five years after the Chernobyl explosion disaster struck once again after a tsunami overwhelmed the considerable safety measures at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. However Fukushima had in place a solid containment structure to reduce the spread of radiation in the event of a worst-case scenario; Chernobyl did not. These two incidents highlight the importance of such safety measures which were critically lacking in an entire class of Soviet-designed reactors.</p><p>This book examines why five countries operating these dangerous reactors first signed international agreements to close them within a few years then instead delayed for almost two decades. It looks at how political decision makers weighed the enormous short-term costs of closing those reactors against the long-term benefits of compliance and how the political instability that dominated post-Communist transitions impacted their choices. The book questions the efficacy of Western governments’ efforts to convince their Eastern counterparts of the dangers they faced and establishes a causal relationship between political stability and compliance behavior. This model will also enable more effective assistance policies in similar situations of political change where decision makers face considerable short-term costs to gain greater future rewards.</p><p>This book provides a valuable resource for postgraduate students academics and policy makers in the fields of nuclear safety international agreements and democratization.</p>