Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 24th Aug 2026, 01:52:52am WEST
External resources will be made available 30 min before a session starts. You may have to reload the page to access the resources.
|
Daily Overview |
| Session | |
|
Political Economy of Energy Supply Location: B131 Session Chair: Stephan A. Schneider, Stanford University | |
    | |
Governing Spent Nuclear Fuel Beyond National Borders: Institutionalizing Trust in East Asia 1: Faculty of Agriculture, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan; 2: Professor Emeritus, Meijo University, Japan; 3: Faculty of Policy Science, Ritsumeikan University, Japan; 4: Faculty of Business Administration, NNagoya University of Commerce and Business, Japan; 5: Institute of Japanese Studies, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea; 6: Center for Northeast Asian Studies / Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Tohoku University, Japan; 7: Department of Economics, Otemon Gakuin University, Japan The management and disposal of spent nuclear fuel represent one of the most persistent governance challenges in nuclear energy policy. Despite decades of technological development, only a limited number of countries—most notably Finland and Sweden—have finalized geological disposal facilities, while many others continue to rely on interim storage. Given the long time horizons, high costs, and transboundary risks involved, spent fuel management increasingly exceeds the capacity of purely national policy frameworks. In Europe, international cooperation has played a crucial role in addressing these challenges. Institutions such as the Western European Nuclear Regulators Association (WENRA) have extended regulatory cooperation beyond reactor safety to include spent fuel management, waste storage, and decommissioning. Through regulatory harmonization, peer review, and shared learning, European cooperation has enhanced not only technical safety but also policy credibility and public trust, even while final disposal decisions remain nationally embedded. In contrast, East Asia diverges from the global trend toward direct disposal. Japan and China continue to pursue reprocessing, while South Korea is actively reconsidering its long-term strategy under growing storage constraints. These divergent pathways, combined with geopolitical tensions and nonproliferation sensitivities, complicate prospects for regional cooperation despite strong incentives arising from shared environmental and safety risks. Rather than advocating institutional transplantation, this article extracts transferable “minimum modules” of cooperation from the European experience. It proposes a phased framework for East Asia, beginning with confidence-building measures such as environmental monitoring and data sharing, advancing toward regulatory learning and joint research, and treating shared disposal strategies as a long-term horizon. The analysis highlights international cooperation not merely as a technical option, but as an institutional foundation for trust, legitimacy, and sustainable nuclear governance | |