Tokyo Conference Summary on Nuclear Phase-out

Wednesday, 4 February 2015

In the previous century, a general belief in the optimality of nuclear technology (as a source of power generation) and deep anxieties over energy security (in light of precarious fluctuations in hydrocarbon-supply) encouraged many countries to aggressively invest in and pursue nuclear option. Shortly after U.S.’ President Eisenhower ‘Atom for Peace’ speech (1953), marking the beginning of a global nuclear era, major countries embraced the technology as a supposedly reliable, safe, and clean source of energy -- a trend that was followed across the developing world as well as a number of communist countries in Europe and Asia. The ‘oil shocks’ in the 1970s and the 1980s further raised concerns over the stability and predictability of the global supply of oil, which, in turn, reinforced the imperative, at least in the minds of the leaders at the time, to rely on supposedly sound source of energy,…