Abe's Nuclear Renaissance

Kingston, Jeff

doi:10.1080/14672715.2014.935136

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Despite widespread public opposition, recent plans suggest that a reinstatement is likely of nuclear power in Japan. This development can only be explained by the strong links within the "nuclear village" (Samuels, 2013, p. 118) comprising of government, business and political institutions in which the narrative of nuclear power as a means to secure energy supply is deeply institutionalised and embedded in the socioeconomic system (Hajer, 2006), (Kingston, 2013(Kingston, , 2014.…”

Section: Japanmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of narratives in socio-technical transitions—Fukushima and the energy regimes of Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom

Hermwille

2016

Energy Research & Social Science

174

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Abstract:In order to reconfigure global socio-economic systems to be compatible with social imperatives and planetary boundaries, a transition towards sustainable development is necessary. The multi-level perspective (MLP) has been developed to study longterm transformative change. This paper complements the MLP by providing an ontological framework for studying and understanding the role of narratives as the vehicle of meaning and intermediation between individual and social collective in the context of ongoing transitions. Narratives are established as an analytical entity to unpack how disturbances at the level of the socio-technical landscape are translated into and contribute to the transformation of socio-technical regimes. To illustrate and test the approach, it is applied to the case of the Fukushima catastrophe: The narratives in relation to nuclear power in Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom are scrutinized and it is explored how these narratives have co-determined the policy responses and thus influenced ongoing transformation processes in the power sectors of the respective countries.

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Section: Japanmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of narratives in socio-technical transitions—Fukushima and the energy regimes of Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom

Hermwille

2016

Energy Research & Social Science

174

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“…In our figure, these and many other high-level founders resulted in NPR's obtaining a very high centrality ranking (ninth on betweenness centrality) in its short existence. The LDP solidly defeated the fractured left-of-center Democratic Party of Japan in December of 2012 and initiated steps to reinstate and expand nuclear power generation (Kingston 2014).…”

Section: Why Does This Matter?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In response to critics and public protests about the meltdown, Keidanren defended the utility corporations, and its members poured money into the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Kingston's (2014) work shows how the electoral strategies of the LDP helped set the stage for a "nuclear renaissance" even "after the triple meltdowns, an endless cascade of damning revelations about safety, a bungled clean-up, and overwhelming public support for phasing out nuclear energy" (p. 468). Prior to the 2012 election, the Nuclear Power Renaissance (NPR) was founded to advance the threatened industry.…”

Section: Why Does This Matter?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Kingston (2014:470) elaborated, “Japan is at the center of the global nuclear-industrial complex” and outspends all other countries on nuclear development. The hub of this energy industrial complex is composed of some of the world’s largest corporations, including three Japanese corporations engaged in joint ventures to develop and promote nuclear technology: General Electric with Hitachi, Westinghouse with Toshiba, and AREVA (French) with Mitsubishi (Kingston 2014). Heavy industries, including cement and steel, enjoy lucrative contracts with the utilities, and major financial corporations insure and finance nuclear energy development.…”

Section: Why Does This Matter?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the fall of 2011, seven months after the devastating tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, the New Yorker published an expose on the political “fallout” of the catastrophe, showing how “Japanese nuclear regulators, like their American counterparts, have frequently been criticized for following a revolving door into lucrative jobs in the industries they police, and vice versa” (Osnos 2011:11). 1 Critics and scholars of these revolving doors in Japan have variously depicted this phenomenon as a “nuclear complex” (Funabashi 2012), “atomic circle” (Hasegawa 2012), or “nuclear village” (Kingston 2014). Funabashi (2012) cited a report to show how the widely cited practice of amakudari —“descent from heaven” or “golden parachutes”—placed “at least 50 high-ranking officials from METI [Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry] .…”

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confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A Nuclear Complex? A Network Visualization of Japan’s Nuclear Industry and Regulatory Elite, 2006 to 2012

Dreiling

Nakamura

2018

Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World

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After the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi facility on March 11, 2011, in Japan, attempts by civil society actors to reroute the energy priorities of the country inevitably confronted obstacles in what scholars, activists, and journalists alike termed a nuclear complex. The authors’ original network data identify a dense field of overlapping executives and officials in Japan who forge long-term ties among the nuclear energy industry, the state, the leading business federation in Japan, nuclear scientists, and the national media. The authors use the Fruchterman-Reingold algorithm to present a large- n network visualization of these organizations and their ties in a manner that spatially distributes similar pairs of organizations proximate to one another.

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Evaluating deliberative participation from a social learning perspective: A case study of the 2012 National Energy Deliberative Polling in post‐Fukushima Japan

Mah

Siu

et al. 2021

Env Pol Gov

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Nuclear power has remained a hugely controversial energy technology since the 1970s and became particularly so after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. Engaging citizens in making energy decisions have thus become an increasingly important governing approach to post‐Fukushima energy transitions in many countries. Deliberative participatory processes and learning through social interactions have been increasingly regarded as critical elements of effective public engagement. Yet, little is known about who learns what, how they learn, and what impacts learning has on nuclear governance. Even less is known about the contextual factors influencing social learning. Advancing the literature on nuclear governance, deliberative participation, and social learning, this paper proposes a learning‐oriented framework to evaluate the outcomes of deliberative participation in the context of nuclear governance. We apply this framework in a case study of a national deliberative poll (DP) on energy conducted in Japan in 2012. We critically examine the extent to which and how social learning occurs under the influence of pre‐existing government‐industry‐society relations as a key contextual factor. Mainly based on a qualitative analysis of transcribed materials from a two‐day deliberation over the DP involving 285 citizens, this study has three main findings. First, participating citizens of the DP were able to acquire all of the three orders of social learning through deliberative processes in the DP process. Second, the provision of multiple sources of information, access to diverse perspectives, and the availability of plenty of dialogic processes are identified as factors that were found to facilitate advancement toward higher orders of learning. Third, the “nuclear iron triangle”—a pro‐nuclear coalition—appeared to constrain social learning impacts in the wider socio‐political systems of nuclear governance in Japan.

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Abe's Nuclear Renaissance

Cited by 9 publications

References 7 publications

The role of narratives in socio-technical transitions—Fukushima and the energy regimes of Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom

The role of narratives in socio-technical transitions—Fukushima and the energy regimes of Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom

A Nuclear Complex? A Network Visualization of Japan’s Nuclear Industry and Regulatory Elite, 2006 to 2012

Evaluating deliberative participation from a social learning perspective: A case study of the 2012 National Energy Deliberative Polling in post‐Fukushima Japan

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