Research Article: Access to Nuclear Safety Information in China

Abstract

China is advancing in its development of nuclear energy in order to satisfy its hunger for increased energy. Several legal instruments have been part of the historical change in the development of China's open-information culture, including the Regulations on Open Government Information, the Measures on Open Environmental Information, and specific institutional arrangements on nuclear information disclosure. However, it might be difficult for the newly formulated nuclear safety information disclosure system to grant people real access to nuclear information. This is principally because of the lower rank of the new instruments in the legislative hierarchy, numerous exceptions for disclosure, legislative objectives that are more propagandistic than human-oriented, and, above all, the absence of a clear definition of the people's right to know.