How public acceptance and bilateral nuclear cooperation affect newcomer countries' nuclear power programs

Abstract

Traditionally, the successful development of nuclear energy is often attributed to strong technical and financial capabilities, as well as consistent political support and stable social situation. However, the evaluation of nuclear power development in newcomers based on these criteria has been limited by the lack of quantitative studies on public acceptance and nuclear cooperation, which are also considered crucial to the success of any nuclear energy program. Using system dynamics to conceptualize these two aspects and regression analysis of newly-developed datasets to estimate related coefficients, this dissertation is able to incorporate public acceptance and nuclear cooperation into a nuclear power development model, which can simulate the quantitative impact of public acceptance and nuclear cooperation on the cost-benefit calculation. In addition, this dissertation shows that the level of public acceptance in a country can be reasonably estimated by its socio-economic conditions, whereas nuclear cooperation has strong correlation with the strategic and economic relationship between suppliers and customers, and the participation to the nonproliferation regime, as well as the security situation of the latter. After being benchmarked with the historical cases of Taiwan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) with positive results, this model was used to simulate the development of nuclear power in four newcomers, namely Vietnam, Egypt, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia. The simulation results indicated that Vietnam would likely have more advantages in terms of nuclear acceptance and cooperation with suppliers in comparison with the other three, in particular Saudi Arabia. Although providing insights on the future development of nuclear energy in newcomers, these simulation results were based on research on well-developed nuclear power programs, thus they might not fully reflect the different conditions of newcomer countries and will have to be further revised in the future. The study was concluded with some recommendations on the need to have a comprehensive and long-term look at the possibility of successful introduction of nuclear energy to a newcomer in the specific socio-economic and political conditions of that country. Finally, weaknesses of this dissertation in terms of data coverage and short-term policy are discussed with suggestions for improvement.