Education as the weakest institutional link in Japan's nuclear regulation

• Main Author: SAITO, Hiro
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2016
• Subjects: Expertise; Science and technology; Social Studies; Japanese education; Asian Studies; Civic and Community Engagement; Politics and Social Change; Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2098; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/3355/type/native/viewcontent/2601_7214_1_SM.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Debates over the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster pointed to a set of institutional and organizational failures in Japan’s nuclear regulation as a primary cause of the disaster. While the Japanese government has implemented reforms to strengthen nuclear regulation, I argue that these reforms have largely left out the education system as a key institution that produces and distributes expertise necessary for nuclear regulation. First, the Japanese education system has traditionally produced only a small number of experts in the fields related to nuclear regulation, aligned top-ranked experts with the pro-nuclear government, and weakened the civil society’s capacity to mobilize counter-experts. Second, the education system has downplayed social-scientific perspectives in energy and environmental education capable of critically examining institutional and organizational dimensions of nuclear regulation. These problems, however, fell outside the purview of post- Fukushima regulatory reforms and, as the result, the education system remains the weakest institutional link in Japan’s nuclear regulation.