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Despite the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, a growing number of countries are interested in expanding or introducing nuclear energy. However, nuclear energy production and nuclear waste disposal give rise to pressing ethical questions that society needs to face. This book takes up this challenge with essays by an international team of scholars focusing on the key issues of risk, justice, and democracy. The essays consider a range of ethical issues, including radiological protection, the influence of gender in the acceptability of nuclear risk, and environmental, international, and intergenerational justice in the context of nuclear energy. They also address the question of when, and under which conditions, nuclear energy should play a role in the world's future supply of electricity, looking at both developing and industrialized countries. The book will interest readers in ethics and political philosophy, social and political sciences, nuclear engineering, and policy studies.
List of contents
1. The ethics of nuclear energy: an introduction Behnam Taebi and Sabine Roeser; Part I. Risk: 2. Nuclear energy and the ethics of radiation protection Sven Ove Hansson; 3. The unknowable ceilings of safety: three ways that nuclear accidents escape the calculus of risk assessments John Downer; 4. Rights to know and the Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island accidents Kristin Shrader-Frechette; 5. Gender, ethical voices, and UK nuclear energy policy in the post-Fukushima era Karen Henwood and Nick Pidgeon; Part II. Justice: 6. The need for a public 'explosion' in the ethics of radiological protection, especially for nuclear power Stephen M. Gardiner; 7. Distributive versus procedural justice in nuclear waste repository siting Pius Krütli, Kjell Törnblom, Ivo Wallimann-Helmer and Michael Stauffacher; 8. Nuclear energy, justice, and power: the case of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station license renewal Bindu Panikkar and Ronald Sandler; 9. Non-anthropocentric nuclear energy ethics John Nolt; Part III. Democracy: 10. Morally experimenting with nuclear energy Ibo van de Poel; 11. Global nuclear energy and international security Thomas E. Doyle, II; 12. Nuclear energy, the capability approach, and the developing world Paolo Gardoni and Colleen Murphy; 13. The role of nuclear energy in the future energy landscape: energy scenarios, nuclear energy and sustainability Rafaela Hillerbrand; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Behnam Taebi is Assistant Professor of Ethics of Technology in the Philosophy Department of Delft University of Technology and Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is the author of The Morally Desirable Option for Nuclear Power Production (2011) and the editor of several volumes, including The Socio-Technical Challenges of Nuclear Power Production and Waste Management (2015).Sabine Roeser is Professor of Ethics in the Philosophy Department of Technische Universiteit Delft, The Netherlands. She is the author of Moral Emotions and Intuitions (2011) and the editor of numerous volumes, including The Ethics of Technological Risk (2009), Handbook of Risk Theory (2012) and Emotion and Value (2014).
Summary
Written by leading international contributors, this book examines the ethical issues concerning nuclear energy technology and waste disposal. Discussing topics such as risk, safety, security, justice and democracy, it is relevant to a broad range of readers including scholars of environmental philosophy, ethics, energy policy studies and the social sciences.
