Introductory description

PO9D3-20

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

1. Introduction & Overview
2. Science, Society & Commercial Nuclear Power
3. The Contemporary Scene: Existing and Planned Commercial Nuclear Facilities
4. The Global Regulation of Commercial Nuclear Power
5. Regional Approaches to Commercial Nuclear Power
6. Reading Week
7. 'Splitting the Atom': Creating a Market for Commercial Nuclear Power
8. Maintaining the Myth of Commercial Viability
9. The Politics of NIMBYism: From Three Mile Island to Fukushima
10. The Neglected Question of Nuclear Waste

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a sound grasp of the main theoretical arguments and substantive issues regarding commercial nuclear power
• Demonstrate knowledge of the key actors in the political economy of commercial nuclear power, and the institutions and processes through which they interact
• Apply the knowledge they have gained to questions of policy affecting organisations both in the public and private sectors
• Conduct research to postgraduate level
• Present work coherently and to a high academic standard.

Indicative reading list

Daniel P. Aldrich, Site Fights: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).

Brian Balogh, Chain Reaction: Expert Debate & Public Participation in American Commercial Nuclear Power, 1945-1975 (Cambridge: CUP, 1991).

Kate Brown, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford: OUP, 2013).

Anthony Burke and Matt McDonald (eds), Critical Security in the Asia-Pacific (Manchester: MUP, 2007).

John Byrne, & Steven M. Hoffman (eds), Governing the Atom: The Politics of Risk (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1996).

Susan Carpenter, Japan's Nuclear Crisis: The Routes to Responsibility (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

Catherine Caufield, Multiple Exposures: Chronicles of the Radiation Age (London: Penguin, 1989).

Graham Farmelo, Churchill's Bomb: A Hidden History of Science, War and Politics (London: Faber & Faber, 2013).

Andrew Feenberg, Questioning Technology (London: Routledge, 1999).

Gabrielle Hecht, Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012).

Laura Hein & Mark Selden (eds), Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1997).

Stephen Hilgartner, Richard C. Bell & Rory O'Connor, Nukespeak: Nuclear Language, Visions, and Mindset (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1982).

Robert Jacobs (ed.), Filling the Hole in the Nuclear Future: Art and Popular Culture Respond to the Bomb (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2010).

Dominic Kelly, “US Hegemony and the Origins of Japanese Nuclear Power: The Politics of Consent”, New Political Economy, Vol. 19, No. 6 (2014), pp. 819-46.

Jeff Kingston (ed.), Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan (London: Routledge, 2012).
John Krige and Kai-Henrik Barth (eds), Global Power Knowledge: Science and Technology in International Affairs, Osiris, 21 (2006).

Carlos Pascual & Jonathan Elkind (eds), Energy Security: Economics, Politics, Strategies and Implications (Washington, DC.: Brookings, 2010).

Peter Pringle & James Spigelman, The Nuclear Barons: The Inside Story of how They Created Our Nuclear Nightmare (London: Spehere Books, 1982).

Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (London: Simon and Schuster, 1998 / 2012).

Benjamin K. Sovacool & Scott Victor Valentine, The National Politics of Nuclear Power: Economics, Security and Governance (London: Routledge2012).

Spencer R. Weart, The Rise of Nuclear Fear (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988 / 2012).

Scott C. Zeman & Michael A. Amundson (eds), Atomic Culture: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Boulder, CO.: University Press of Colorado, 2004).

Subject specific skills

TBC

Transferable skills

TBC