Fukushima

New Symposium on Disaster Law

The Duke Environmental Law and Policy Forum has just published a great symposium on disaster law.  The authors include some leading lights in environmental law, and for good reason, since disaster issues and environmental law are closely related.  Here are links to all of the individual articles: Articles Introduction: Legal Scholarship, the Disaster Cycle, and …

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Fukushima Whodunit

In a remarkable and significant new report, Japanese experts have concluded that the Fukushima nuclear accident was a “man”-made disaster – phrased this way perhaps in a gallant effort to allow all women to distance themselves from the decision making process. This dramatic conclusion prompts yet another question: If “man” isn’t responsible, then who is? …

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Betting on the Nuclear Renaissance

For many years, there has been a healthy debate in the United States about the role nuclear power should play in our future energy plans. In the energy law courses that I teach, I have been struck with the consistent support among students for expanding our reliance on nuclear power as part of a comprehensive …

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Going Beyond the “Design-Basis Event”

A conventional approach to safety is based on the concept of design events.  A building code might say, for example, that a building should be able to survive a 7.0 earthquake.  This approach has been basic to the regulation of nuclear reactors.  As the interim report of the post-Fukushima NRC task force explains: [The regulation[ …

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Some Thoughts About Environmental Disasters

In an environmental disaster, a disaster causes environmental harm, environmental change causes an acute risk to humans, or both take place.  Examples include the BP Oil Spill, the London killer for of 1952, the 2003 European heat wave, and the 2011 Japanese tsunami. Climate change will intensify the connection between disaster issues and the environment. …

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Post-Tsunami Japan Teaches the World About Energy Within Limits

Earlier this summer, I accompanied a class of renewable energy law students to a home in Vermont that is “off the grid”.  The family lives quite comfortably – television, microwave oven, electric washing machine, sizable refrigerator.  With the exception of a small diesel generator, which they use once or twice a year, they derive all …

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But Will You Love My Energy Source in the Morning?

In the wake of cataclysmic energy disasters occurring on opposite sides of the globe, some interesting regional and national reflections are currently underway that may–or may not–alter long-term energy futures in the U.S. and abroad. One development this week that drew surprisingly little public attention is that no less a personage than the Prime Minister of …

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Rethinking NRC Policy

An NRC task force seems to be heading for some significant policy shifts in light of the Fukushima reactor failures, including tighter requirements for re-licensing and reduced reliance on voluntary guidelines.  The two commissioners on the task force seem to be reassessing the Commission’s previously nonchalant attitude toward extreme events.  ClimateWire reports: NRC policy has …

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The story of the Price-Anderson Act: how Congress made nuclear power financially viable in the U.S. by eliminating accountability for risk

Ever wonder how nuclear power plants have been able to get financial backing in the U.S. despite the huge, and largely uncertain, potential risks they pose?  Or why there are nuclear plants within a few hours’ drive of major population centers such as Los Angeles and New York?  Or who will pay the costs that …

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