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Pré-publication, Document de travail Année : 2022

Nuclear Power Technology in Post-Industrial Civilization

Résumé

This article presents both descriptive and normative analyses of the nuclear power industry based on civilization theory, which hypothesizes that civilization is created by human ignorance. Our limited rationality created various civilizations, resulting from our random trial-and-error solutions and thoughtless imitation of ad hoc acceptable solutions. Technological innovation can be considered an endless trial-and-error process to overcome risks that inevitably follow new technological solutions. Several economic and civilizational theories, such as A. Toffler’s Third Wave, J. Rifkin’s Entropy, A. Gerschenkron’s theory about economic development history, W. Abernathy’s Productivity Dilemma, and F. Hayek’s liberalism sociology, are applied to analyze technological innovation. We hypothesize that radical civilizational changes are triggered by serious social risks. For example, hunter-gatherers’ civilization dramatically changed to an agriculture-cattle society because of animal and fruit shortages. Humans invented hunting tools with limited rationality to overcome the shortage, which accelerated the shortage and caused drastic changes to agriculture-cattle civilization. The Industrial Revolution was caused by mass starvation in the agricultural society, and the high-tech information society was caused by pollution and work-alienation problems in the industrial society. Technological innovations are triggered by the technological risks caused by limited rationality. The “technological hierarchy” concept, which illustrates the technological innovation process as a trial-and-error decision tree leading to a final practical product, is useful for understanding various industrial developments, such as the automobile, aircraft, and nuclear power generation industries. Humans cannot simply abandon technology that entails risks because of the benefits enjoyed but try to overcome the technological risks using new technology, which inevitably raises new risks. Humans continue technological innovation like continuing to eat the “forbidden fruit”. Based on the “technological hierarchy” concept, after a standard model is established in any industry, technological safety, efficiency, and cost reduction rapidly improve. Otherwise, we cannot find a useful solution for technological problems, and the technology will dead-end. Is nuclear power technology a dead-end because of unsolvable radioactive problems? Alternatively, can we regard standard reactor models, such as the light water reactor (LWR), the European pressurized reactor (EPR), and the small modular reactor (SMR) as dominant stable models, which will lead the nuclear industry to the growth stage? We investigated the related political leadership and the national consensus construction process by comparing France and Japan. In France, the authoritative liberal approach, which makes a democratic means compatible with authoritative decision‑making, realizes social consensus to maintain over 70% of nuclear power generation. After the Fukushima accident, the Japanese government failed to propose a concrete road map to recover nuclear power generation. A precise understanding of nuclear technological risks based on an investigation of nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima reveals what a nuclear power technological policy should be in the future.
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Dates et versions

hal-03737847, version 1 (25-07-2022)

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Paternité - Pas d'utilisation commerciale - Partage selon les Conditions Initiales - CC BY 4.0

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  • HAL Id : hal-03737847 , version 1

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Kazunobu Oyama. Nuclear Power Technology in Post-Industrial Civilization: A Comparative Study of France and Japan. 2022. ⟨hal-03737847⟩

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