Governing Nuclear Safety: Path-Dependencies and Future Challenges
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Abstract:
Amidst a push to decarbonization and concerns about energy security, many national governments are reconsidering nuclear power as a crucial part of the energy mix. Yet, this renewed enthusiasm has recently sparked many debates about nuclear safety regulations. In recent years, large reactor projects have seen costly delays because of failures to comply with codes and standards. And in countries like the US, the UK, and Sweden, governments are pushing for far-reaching deregulation. In this talk, I will provide a historical perspective of how we got here and what deregulation might entail. I argue that we cannot understand the governance of nuclear safety in many countries without understanding path dependencies that go back to the Industrial Revolution. Recent pushes for deregulation are not unique but are renewed expressions of long-standing, optimistic assessments of nuclear risk and the complexity of nuclear power plants. I finish the talk with some key future challenges in nuclear safety governance, including warfare, oversight in non-democratic regimes, the decline in expertise, and aging nuclear reactors.
Bio:
Siegfried Evens is a historian and STS scholar specialising in technology, energy, (environmental) risk, and disaster. In the last few years, he has worked on a number of research projects on nuclear energy and reactor safety. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at SPRU at the University of Sussex, as well as a postdoctoral researcher at Linköping University in Sweden and a Guest Professor at the University of Hasselt in Belgium. He obtained his PhD from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden in 2024. Evens worked with various (nuclear) policymakers in Sweden, France, the US, and Belgium to introduce historical and societal perspectives into debates on nuclear safety and security.