Much ado about nothing? The rhetoric and reality of the nuclear renaissance

Abstract

Since 2000, swathes of energy experts, government officials, industry representatives and journalists have predicted the emergence of a global ‘nuclear renaissance.’ Nuclear energy was said to be on the precipice of a new era of development, characterised by widespread construction of new nuclear reactors and a concomitant increase in global nuclear capacity. Despite this expectation, there is little evidence to date which suggests that a revival of nuclear power has taken place in the regions of Western Europe and North America in the way that the rhetoric depicted. This thesis therefore seeks to firstly establish that there is a disjuncture between the rhetoric and reality of the nuclear renaissance in Western Europe and North America, and secondly, to explain why this disjuncture exists. Academic and journalistic debate over recent developments in civil nuclear energy policy has tended to focus on two key reasons for why there has not been a widespread expansion of nuclear energy in these regions. Firstly, that the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in 2011 reignited concerns over nuclear safety, thereby eroding public and political support for nuclear new build. Secondly, that the economic problems facing nuclear development continued to act as a major disincentive to the construction of new nuclear power plants. However, the global applicability of these two issues means that neither of these explanations can explain why the nuclear renaissance appears to have failed in Western Europe and North America, while nuclear new build is expanding in other parts of the world. Moreover, the revival of safety concerns post-Fukushima fails to explain why there was little evidence of a nuclear renaissance taking place prior to March 2011. This thesis provides a contribution to knowledge by adopting a more holistic and inductive approach for understanding why there is a disjuncture between the expectation and reality of the nuclear renaissance in Western Europe and North America. It challenges existing explanations for the failure of the nuclear renaissance as being simplistic, mono-causal and a-historical. This thesis disputes the idea that the absence of a widespread expansion of nuclear energy and the apparent failure of the nuclear renaissance can be attributed to any one problem or event. Instead, it embraces the simple premise that a broad range of contextual factors must be explored in order to fully understand why the rhetoric of a nuclear renaissance has not become a reality. An extensive analysis of government, industry and media documents published from 1945 onwards, as well as interviews with experts in nuclear energy policy, was undertaken in order to establish a better understanding of how and why nuclear energy development changes over time. Through this process, it became clear that the reasons typically cited for explaining changes in nuclear development are ‘nuclear-specific factors’. That is, factors relating directly to the construction and operation of nuclear power plants – such as the economics of nuclear energy, the safety of nuclear power plants, and the storage and disposal of nuclear waste. While these factors undeniably play an important role in influencing nuclear new build, focusing solely on these nuclear-specific factors obscures the impact of broader social, political, and contextual changes on nuclear energy development. This thesis draws upon political science literature to argue that the changing trajectory of nuclear energy development has also been influenced by broader contextual shifts in the post-war era. The impact of four ‘contextual factors’ on nuclear power are examined: the rise of environmentalism, the decline in public trust in government, changes in risk perception, and the rise of neoliberalism. Each of these contextual shifts have changed the way in which agents think about and respond to the issue of nuclear power. Consequently, this thesis argues that both nuclear-specific factors and contextual factors are important in explaining change in civil nuclear energy development. All of these factors are dynamic and interactive, mutually shaping and influencing one another. Moreover, both of these groups of factors have contributed to the failure of the nuclear renaissance in Western Europe and North America. The ongoing presence of these challenges will continue to hamper the future success of civil nuclear energy development, and prevent a nuclear renaissance from taking place.