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Investigations of the Fukushima nuclear power accident sequence revealed the man-made character of the catastrophe and its roots in regulatory capture effected by a network of corruption, collusion, and nepotism. A review of corruption incidents in the global nuclear industry during 2012-2013 reveals that the Japanese experience is not isolated. Gross corruption is evident in nuclear technology exporting countries such as Russia, China, and the United States, and in a number of nuclear technology importing countries. The survey results make clear that national nuclear regulatory regimes are inadequate and that the global regime is virtually completely ineffective. Widespread corruption of the nuclear industry has profound social and political consequences resulting from the corrosion of public trust in companies, governments, and energy systems themselves. KEYWORDS: nuclear industry, corruption, regulatory capture, public trust.
THE NOW JUSTLY FAMOUS REPORT OF THE NATIONAL DIET OF JAPAN Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, chaired by Kurokawa Kiyoshi, outlined the commission's answer to the fundamental question the Fukushima disaster raised: Why did this accident, which should have been foreseeable, actually occur? "The root cause of the accident was man-made. . . . The Commission considers that the man-made disaster was actually caused by organizational and institutional problems resulting in a reversing of the relationship between the regulated and regulators" (National Diet of Japan 2012, 11).
Much has been written since March 2011 about the extraordinarily complex networks of corruption, collusion, and nepotism that structured what the commission called the "intricate form of 'Regulatory Capture'" created "with the political, bureaucratic, and business circles in perfect coordination" in the five decades since the construction of Japan's first nuclear power plant, Tokai, began in 1959 (National Diet of Japan 2012, 3). Yet, while the level of detailed evidence and analysis in the Kurokawa report and other studies was deeply shocking, glimpses of this "intricate form" had been available for some years, not least in the public history of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) itself, especially in the events of 2002 leading up to the resignation of the company's president (Takemoto 2003). Part of the report's shock value comes from its emphasis on the power of this set of interlocking structures both to suppress damaging evidence and to induce self-censorship by otherwise well-informed media...