원전 사고와 원전체제의 변화: TMI와 체르노빌 사고를 중심으로

Abstract

This article will try to show the major nuclear plant accidents such as the Three Mile Island[TMI] accident in the US, and the Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union. It will focus not on their causes and processes but on the effects on the public opinion and the nuclear power regimes among the UK, France, West Germany, and the US. It will investigate on how the public opinion had formulated, and how the nuclear power regimes had responded to these accidents among these 4 countries in a comparative history. It will show the diverse responses of each state’s nuclear power regime from the post-nuclear plant policy to the reinforcement of the existing nuclear plant policy, even though these nuclear plant accidents had affected enormously on their societies. The TMI accident in 1979 was perceived as a great shock to most Americans. Despite its scale was so disastrous that the anti-nuclear movement had risen nationwide, the American nuclear power regime did not give up the pro-nuclear plant policy. Furthermore, its impacts on the European countries including the UK, France, and West Germany were relatively not so strong, although these countries took steps in enforcing the safety problems of the nuclear plants. However, the Chernobyl accident case in 1986 was different to the European states because it was the worst nuclear plant accident and they were interconnected as a whole, no countries escaped from the radioactive fallout. Despite of this fact, the responses of each states were so different. As a result, while the UK had to accept to the people’s voices asking for the reexamination of safety on the nuclear plants, the US had still continued the nuclear power regime in the federal level, while some state governments – New York, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts – raised doubts about the operations of nuclear plants. More dramatic contrast happened between West Germany and France. While West Germany finally decided to build no more nuclear plant for a post-nuclear society, France opened most information on the nuclear plants and had got a support from the majority of French people. Through implementing a policy of “embrace and extend” against the anti-nuclear power, the French government had succeeded in making its nuclear power regime more positively.