The rule of law: A fragile tool for the development of emerging nuclear technologies

Abstract

Before the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in Japan in 2011, the nuclear industry had strongly promoted the idea that the time of nuclear renaissance had come after a long, fallow period in the wake of the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). During the post-Fukushima period, there were few new projects, but growing demand for energy and anxieties raised by climate change have brought us to a turning point. Despite the Fukushima accident, which led to some nuclear projects being delayed or cancelled, there is still a great deal of interest in the use of nuclear power for civil purposes. This is primarily because, as the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol has rightly pointed out: “Without an important contribution from nuclear power, the global energy transition will be that much harder.”1 In this regard, in 2010, 67 reactors were under construction, 120 planned and 441 in operation.2 In 2022, 11 years after the Fukushima Daiichi accident, there were 60 under construction, 104 planned and 338 proposed.3 The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates that nuclear electric power capacity will have increased by as much as 23% by 2030 and more than doubled by 2050.4 In addition to this renewed interest, many projects are now in development, opening up new prospects for the use of the atom for civil purposes. Nuclear fusion, small modular reactors (SMRs), the use of artificial intelligence, floating, underwater and space reactors, and nuclear batteries, to name but a few of the projects on the table, lead us to think that the “nuclear renaissance” is slowly shifting to a “nuclear spring”. In this view, where the concept of a renaissance involves new impetus for nuclear energy, with the construction of new facilities, the concept of “spring” refers to a determination to break with nuclear traditions, in terms of concepts, means and players. Consequently, this phenomenon calls for new legal rules which, in some cases, have already started to be debated.