• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.241-259
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• 1979

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.908-918
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• 2023

The Saudi National Atomic Energy project aims to adopt peaceful nuclear technologies and be part of the country's energy mix. As emerging nuclear energy, it is essential to understand public concerns and acceptability of nuclear energy, as well as the factors influencing acceptance to develop nuclear energy policy and implement nuclear energy programs. The purpose of this study is to analyze the public attitudes and acceptance of nuclear energy among Saudi Arabian citizens by utilizing protection motivation theory and theory of planned behavior. A total of 1,404 participants answered a questionnaire which was distribute by convenience sampling approach. A Structural Equation Modeling framework was constructed and analyzed to understand public behavior toward building the country's first Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). Before analyzing the data, the model was validated. The research concluded that the benefits of nuclear power plants were essential in determining people's acceptance of NPPs. Surprisingly, the effect of the perceived benefits was found higher than the effect of the perceived risks to the acceptance. Furthermore, the public's participation in this study revealed that the NPPs location has a significant impact on their acceptance. Based on the finding, several policy implementations were suggested. Finally, the study's model results would benefit scholars, government agencies, and the business sector in Saudi Arabia and worldwide.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.33-44
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• 1995

Public acceptance has become an important factor in nuclear power program particularly after Chernobyl accident and recent rapid democratization in Korea. Methods reflecting public opinions in order to improve public acceptance are firstly to understand what the public think about nuclear power plant and secondly to find out the public preference values for its policies. For this purpose, simplified multi-attribute utility (MAU) model was applied to analyze the public perception pattern for fire power production systems. And the conjoint analysis was applied to find out the quantitative values of public preferences for twelve policy alternatives to improve the safety and to support communities surrounding nuclear power plants in Korea. To implement these perception and preference analyses, mail survey was conducted to the Qualified sample who had the experience of visiting nuclear power plant. Diagnosis of their perception pattern for five power production systems was made by the simplified MAU model. Estimation of the quantitative preference values for potential policy alternatives was made by the conjoint measurement technique, which made it possible to forecast the effectiveness of each option. The results from the qualified sample and the methods used in this study would be helpful to set up new policy of nuclear power plant.

• Science & Technology Policy
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• v.13 no.6 s.144
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• pp.92-110
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• 2003

• Korean Journal of Legislative Studies
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.151-185
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• 2017

Seoul's One Less Nuclear Power Plant is the major urban energy policy launched in April 2012. Its effort to respond to climate change and energy crisis in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear accident turned out very successful, considering huge decrease of energy consumption. However, the question of how the cut of energy consumption was possible remains unanswered. This paper introduces the concept of urban governance capacity as the cause of the success. It is the managing and governing capability to maintain the logical consistency policy system, comprising of policy perception, goals, policy tools and evaluation. Without this logical correspondence between the policy factors, any system including energy regime easily falls apart during the systemic transitional period. Governance capacity provides the integrating framework, so that the system as a whole maintains the internal homeostasis.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.2 no.1 s.3
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• pp.135-156
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• 2002

The view of technology is largely divided into 2 theories: (1) the theory of autonomous technology that claims technology's own development logic and momentum, (2) the theory of social determinism that regards technology as reflection of political choices. Autonomous technologists read our society in the language of technology and social determinists read our technology in the language of society. This paper tries to analyze that conflicts between government and environmental group in nuclear policy, especially radioactive waste disposition policy reflect collisions between autonomous technologists and social determinists representing technology and politics, respectively. On the surface, such collisions are occurred in rational, ethical and economical aspects. It maintains, however, in depth, they are about solution means to problems from which technologies derived. Also, it suggests that one of the alternatives to avoid inevitable collision may be interaction approach based on intertwining technology with society. More understanding of political natures and control possibilities for technology is needed because interaction approach is founded on this understanding. Finally, to help forming the Korea's nuclear utilization policy from now on, it gives 2 case studies compared France with Germany where expanding and contracting nuclear utilization policy, respectively.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.507-514
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• 2018

Technology-intensive industries can be used as a major growth engine for resource poor country in the territories. For example, in the case of Korea, nuclear power and radiation technology industry was highly developed, and it was possible to obtain national interests such as solving energy problems within the country and exporting nuclear power plants. On the other hand, there are cases where national damage is caused by erroneous governmental policy-making on technology-intensive sectors. In this study, we analyzed cases of misguided governmental policy-making for technology-intensive industry and three factors were identified. And we tried to develop a rational policy-making model using three types of allison's model in combination. The results of this study are expected to be useful for rational governmental policy-making processes for technology-intensive industries.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.850-854
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• 2017

Public acceptance of nuclear power is important for the government, the major stakeholder of the industry, because consensus is required to drive actions. It is therefore no coincidence that the governments of nations operating nuclear reactors are endeavoring to enhance public acceptance of nuclear power, as better acceptance allows stable power generation and peaceful processing of nuclear wastes produced from nuclear reactors. Past research, however, has been limited to epistemological measurements using methods such as the Likert scale. In this research, we propose big data analysis as an attractive alternative and attempt to identify the attitudes of the public on nuclear power. Specifically, we used common big data analyses to analyze consumer opinions via SNS (Social Networking Services), using keyword analysis and opinion analysis. The keyword analysis identified the attitudes of the public toward nuclear power. The public felt positive toward nuclear power when Korea successfully exported nuclear reactors to the United Arab Emirates. With the Fukushima accident in 2011 and certain supplier scandals in 2012, however, the image of nuclear power was degraded and the negative image continues. It is recommended that the government focus on developing useful businesses and use cases of nuclear power in order to improve public acceptance.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.221-248
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• 2016

In this study, we conducted an in-depth literature review of the innovation characteristics of nuclear technology. We understood that the main issue may be a transition of fourth generation nuclear energy technology. We also analyzed a present status of Korean policy on nuclear energy technology and identified some implications for a successful settlement of the fourth generation nuclear energy technology. This study could provide some policy implications for maintaining the sustainable competitiveness of the fourth generation nuclear energy technology in Korea. According to our study, the factors that influence on a transition of nuclear energy technology are a policy-induced market for technical application and demonstration, stable and long-term resource allocation, constant interaction among stakeholders of innovation, accumulation of skill and know-how for an entire system. In addition, we conducted a case analysis on policy for Korean fourth generation nuclear energy technology. According to this case study, it would be necessary for Korea to pursue systematic training of human resources, active response to a social acceptance and reaction, establishment of specific plan for technical demonstration, long-term policy suggestion, and active promotion of constant interaction between stakeholders.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.383-395
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• 2023

Since 1997, the Republic of Korea (ROK) has been developing pyro-processing (Pyro) technology to reduce the disposal burden of high-level radioactive waste by recycling spent nuclear fuel (SNF). Compared to plutonium and uranium extraction process, Korean Pyro technology has relatively excellent proliferation resistance that cannot separate pure plutonium owing to its intrinsic characteristics. Regarding Pyro technology development of ROK, the Bush administration considered that Pyro is not reprocessing under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, whereas the Obama administration considered that Pyro is subject to reprocessing. However, the Bush and Obama administrations did not allow ROK to conduct full Pyro activities using SNF, even though ROK had faithfully complied with international nonproliferation obligations. This is because the US nuclear nonproliferation policy to prevent the spread of sensitive technologies, such as enrichment and reprocessing, has a strong effect on ROK, unlike Japan, on a bilateral level beyond the NPT regime for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.