A Study on the Nuclear Safety Agreements

In this paper, we made a comparison of application between nuclear safety agreements and pollution control agreements, and considered how to improve the way of applying the former. In order to comprehend the actual status of pollution control agreements, we conducted some hearings with the Chiba Prefecture and the Chiba City because there have been few empirical studies on the application of pollution control agreements. Based on these hearings, we found it a characteristic point of pollution control agreement that quantitative standards for emission function are the main criteria of application which local governments and utilities establish through negotiations. In contrast, the ways of applying nuclear safety agreements are often ambiguous because there are no clear criteria. This comparison suggests that the stakeholders around nuclear safety agreements discuss and agree to set out concrete standards of application of nuclear safety agreements as well as pollution control agreements. However, such a difference between the two could be an indication of the difficulty to create a consensus among stakeholders in the case of nuclear safety agreement given the historical context and the differences of risk characteristics. In that case, it can be found useful for risk governance that one introduce the idea of participatory risk management to the application of nuclear safety agreements.