Title

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

Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

1-2016

Abstract

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.

Keywords

Social Studies, Japanese education

Discipline

Asian Studies | Civic and Community Engagement | Politics and Social Change | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration

Research Areas

Sociology

Publication

Journal of Social Studies Education Research

Volume

5

First Page

33

Last Page

56

ISSN

1309-9108

Publisher

Journal of Social Studies Education Research

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Additional URL

https://journal.unesa.ac.id/index.php/jsse/article/view/2601

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