• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.775-788
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• 2012

This study was done at a scientific camp sponsored by Nara Women's University Secondary School, Japan. In this school, $10^{th}$ grade students from 4 East Asian countries: Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore, participated. We made a research on students' perceptions about nuclear energy. Sample populations include 77 students in total, with 12 Korean, 46 Japanese, 9 Taiwanese and 10 Singaporean students. Overall perceptions comparison about nuclear energy shows average values from the order of highest Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and to lowest, Japan. We implemented a T-test to identify perception differences about nuclear energy, with one group that include 3 countries (Korea, Taiwan and Singapore) and another group that includes all the Japanese students. T-test results of perceptions about nuclear energy shows students from the 3 countries of Korea, Taiwan and Singapore having higher average than Japanese students. (p<.05). Korean average scores regarding overall perceptions about nuclear energy show as the highest in all 4 East Asian countries and also highest in all subcategories. On the contrary in Japan, they have lower and negative perceptions of nuclear energy. In spite of these facts, perceptions of Japanese students about nuclear energy seem lowest and negative mainly because of the recent Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, caused by the tsunami and its subsequent damages and fears of radiation leaks, etc. This shows that negative information about future disasters and its resulting damages like the Chernobyl nuclear accident could influence more on people's risk perception than general information like nuclear energy-related technologies or the news that the plant is operating normally, etc. Even if the possibility of this kind of accident is very low, just one accident could bring abnormal risks to technology itself. This strong signal makes negative image and strengthens its perceptions to the people. This could bring a stigma about nuclear energy. This study shows that Government's policy about the highest priority for nuclear energy safety is most important. As long as such perception and decision are fixed, we found that it might not be easy to get changed again because they were already fortified and maintained.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.7
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• pp.1168-1172
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• 2018

This study went beyond making an indicator simply based on theoretical arguments, and explored a wide spectrum of different types of perceptions about energy safety to make a concept of energy safety for the Korean society. The energy safety schemata of people can be divided into three types. Type1 is concern about multi-level risks-responsibility-centric, type2 is concern about security and personal burden-expertise-centric, and type3 is concern about health and personal burden-responsibility-centric. Questions were designed on the basis of the characteristics, differences and commonalities of the three types of perceptions, explored through the Q methodology, and Koreans' perception of nuclear safety was examined. Based on the results of this research the following components of trust in nuclear safety were derived, risk perception, responsibility, honesty, expertise and procedural justification. The items for specifically evaluating them were developed, and factor analysis was conducted, and as a result, the validity of each item was proven. The components of the nuclear safety trust indicator do not exist independently, but influence each other continuously through interactions. For this reason, rather than focusing on any one of them, laws and systems must be improved first so that they can move together in one big frame.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.773-779
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• 2018

This study surveyed 137 policymakers and key stakeholders (e.g., employees of government agencies, academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, industry, and advocacy groups) involved in making decisions on nuclear energy policy, investigating how they differentially perceived the importance of scientific evidence in driving nuclear policy. We also identified the policy areas that each group of decision-makers are mostly concerned about and showed how such concerns might contextualize and ultimately shape their perceptions of science-driven policy.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.626-630
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• 2019

After several significant nuclear accidents, public attitudes toward nuclear energy technologies and facilities are considered to be one of the essential factors in the national energy and electricity policy-making process of several nations that employ nuclear energy as their key energy resource. However, it is difficult to explore and capture such an attitude, because the majority of prior studies analyzed public attitudes with a limited number of respondents and fragmentary opinion polls. In order to supplement this point, this study suggests a big data analyzing method with K-LIWC (Korean-Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count), sentiment and query analysis methods, and investigates public attitudes, positive and negative emotional statements about nuclear energy with the collected data sets of well-known social media and network services in Korea over time. Results show that several events and accidents related to nuclear energy have consistent or temporary effects on the attitude and ratios of the statements, depending on the kind of events and accidents. The presented methodology and the use of big data in relation to the energy industry is suggested as it can be helpful in addressing and exploring public attitudes. Based on the results, implications, limitations, and future research areas are presented.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.4617-4627
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• 2023

Public perception of benefit over risk is the de facto factor in planning, construction, operation, halting, or phase-out of a nuclear power plant in any country. Even if there are multiple pathways of perceiving risk/benefit among different stakeholders, the perception of nuclear and non-nuclear groups needs to be individually tracked to help understand sectoral influence. Related studies were basically performed between the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and non-STEM groups. However, there are no such studies between the nuclear and non-nuclear groups. This study investigated the risk-benefit perceptions between the nuclear group (N = 102) and the non-nuclear group (N = 467) using survey data to measure their stake and identify the underlying factors by validating the hypotheses, through descriptive analysis, and structural equation modeling (SEM). Results showed that risk perception is significantly high in the non-nuclear group (as the P-value is > 0.001 to <0.01) while the benefit perception is slightly low in the nuclear group (as the P-value is > 0.01 to <0.05). The non-nuclear group was significantly influenced by risk perception due to a lack of involvement in nuclear activities. Notably, the nuclear group is less interactive in disseminating nuclear energy benefits to the non-nuclear group. Surprisingly, misperceptions and lack of confidence about the benefits of nuclear energy also exist in the nuclear group. The study emphasizes debunking nuclear myths in the nuclear and non-nuclear groups through meaningful interactions and demands effective public awareness-building programs by competent authorities for the growth of the nuclear industry.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.3570-3577
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• 2012

Researches on the danger of nuclear power generation, the foundation of the development of national industry and one of the energy sources, as perceived by ordinary citizens, are very important to social acceptance of nuclear power generation. Accordingly, this study intends to understand how ordinary citizens perceive the social risk of nuclear power generation and radiation, and their misconceptions, and to propose ways to improve such perceptions. To achieve these goals, this study analyzed the perceptions of 251 ordinary citizens. The analysis showed that ordinary citizens have vague anxiety and suspicion about the safety of nuclear power generation, and little trust in government-affiliated organizations. The younger they were, the more influential they thought corporations and industries were. The result of this study suggests that the misconceptions of ordinary citizens should be corrected by professors and scientists in university research institutions they trust the most, and their intrinsic perceptions should be changed accordingly.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.12 no.7
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• pp.85-93
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• 2014

The Press related Energy including nuclear energy has social responsibility that it should pass the scientific factors to the right. It is essential to ensure the accuracy and fairness. The general public, such as press releases and information obtained through indirect communication affects social acceptance of nuclear power, which is used to determine the direction of energy policy, the most important factor to be taken into account. Recent rapid increase coverage of NPP lose in balance of nuclear power plants. In this study the qualitative interviews were performed with the workers who stand directly in obtaining information about nuclear related organizations. By E-mail and FGI the data were collected from the workers' perception about domestic nuclear news. They perceived the NPP news that the negative aspects of nuclear power plants were too much dealt in nuclear news coverage, and risk of NPP is only exaggerated and distorted, the lack of expertise knowledge on nuclear power and recognize that the cause was a lack of understanding. 'Nuclear mah' for the event were aware that should dig more thoroughly. The Journal of Digital Policy & Management.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.33-54
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• 2021

With the fourth industrial revolution and the arrival of the New Normal era due to Corona, the importance of Non-contact technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data research has been increasing. Convergent research is being conducted in earnest to keep up with these research trends, but not many studies have been conducted in the area of nuclear research using artificial intelligence and big data-related technologies such as natural language processing and text mining analysis. This study was conducted to confirm the applicability of data science analysis techniques to the field of nuclear research. Furthermore, the study of identifying trends in nuclear spent fuel recognition is critical in terms of being able to determine directions to nuclear industry policies and respond in advance to changes in industrial policies. For those reasons, this study conducted a media trend analysis of pyroprocessing, a spent nuclear fuel treatment technology. We objectively analyze changes in media perception of spent nuclear fuel dry treatment techniques by applying text mining analysis techniques. Text data specializing in Naver's web news articles, including the keywords "Pyroprocessing" and "Sodium Cooled Reactor," were collected through Python code to identify changes in perception over time. The analysis period was set from 2007 to 2020, when the first article was published, and detailed and multi-layered analysis of text data was carried out through analysis methods such as word cloud writing based on frequency analysis, TF-IDF and degree centrality calculation. Analysis of the frequency of the keyword showed that there was a change in media perception of spent nuclear fuel dry treatment technology in the mid-2010s, which was influenced by the Gyeongju earthquake in 2016 and the implementation of the new government's energy conversion policy in 2017. Therefore, trend analysis was conducted based on the corresponding time period, and word frequency analysis, TF-IDF, degree centrality values, and semantic network graphs were derived. Studies show that before the 2010s, media perception of spent nuclear fuel dry treatment technology was diplomatic and positive. However, over time, the frequency of keywords such as "safety", "reexamination", "disposal", and "disassembly" has increased, indicating that the sustainability of spent nuclear fuel dry treatment technology is being seriously considered. It was confirmed that social awareness also changed as spent nuclear fuel dry treatment technology, which was recognized as a political and diplomatic technology, became ambiguous due to changes in domestic policy. This means that domestic policy changes such as nuclear power policy have a greater impact on media perceptions than issues of "spent nuclear fuel processing technology" itself. This seems to be because nuclear policy is a socially more discussed and public-friendly topic than spent nuclear fuel. Therefore, in order to improve social awareness of spent nuclear fuel processing technology, it would be necessary to provide sufficient information about this, and linking it to nuclear policy issues would also be a good idea. In addition, the study highlighted the importance of social science research in nuclear power. It is necessary to apply the social sciences sector widely to the nuclear engineering sector, and considering national policy changes, we could confirm that the nuclear industry would be sustainable. However, this study has limitations that it has applied big data analysis methods only to detailed research areas such as "Pyroprocessing," a spent nuclear fuel dry processing technology. Furthermore, there was no clear basis for the cause of the change in social perception, and only news articles were analyzed to determine social perception. Considering future comments, it is expected that more reliable results will be produced and efficiently used in the field of nuclear policy research if a media trend analysis study on nuclear power is conducted. Recently, the development of uncontact-related technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data research is accelerating in the wake of the recent arrival of the New Normal era caused by corona. Convergence research is being conducted in earnest in various research fields to follow these research trends, but not many studies have been conducted in the nuclear field with artificial intelligence and big data-related technologies such as natural language processing and text mining analysis. The academic significance of this study is that it was possible to confirm the applicability of data science analysis technology in the field of nuclear research. Furthermore, due to the impact of current government energy policies such as nuclear power plant reductions, re-evaluation of spent fuel treatment technology research is undertaken, and key keyword analysis in the field can contribute to future research orientation. It is important to consider the views of others outside, not just the safety technology and engineering integrity of nuclear power, and further reconsider whether it is appropriate to discuss nuclear engineering technology internally. In addition, if multidisciplinary research on nuclear power is carried out, reasonable alternatives can be prepared to maintain the nuclear industry.