Reconciling Energy Needs And Non Proliferation

From the John Holmes Library Collection.

This book presents the universal issue of radioactive waste management from the perspective of the German legal system, analysing how lawmakers have responded to the problem of nuclear waste over the course of the last seventy years. In this book, Robert Rybski unwraps and explains the perplexing legal and social issues related to radioactive waste. He takes readers through the entire ‘life-cycle’: from the moment that radioactive material is classified as radioactive waste, through to the period of interim storage, and right up to its final disposal. However, this last step in radioactive waste management (that of final disposal) has not yet been achieved in Germany, or anywhere in the world, and has been the subject of hefty public debate for dozens of years. As a result, the book analyses the most recent regulations in place to enable final disposal. This book will be of interest to energy policy experts, academics and professionals who work in the area of nuclear energy.

This book analyses the German constitutional system's responses towards nuclear energy. Robert Rybski begins with a presentation of energy security as a constitutional value and explores how it connects with nuclear energy. He also examines constitutional standards derived from the German Constitution, which directly regulates nuclear energy issues within the German system of power. The book presents the structure of sources of law that are binding in the area of security of nuclear installations and considers the impact that The European Atomic Energy Community had on the German constitutional system. The final part of the book is devoted to a novel judicial concept of the so-called Restrisiko – a risk that cannot be avoided – which has been developed in the jurisprudence of the Federal Constitutional Court. The essence of this concept is an assumption that as long as the legal framework regulating nuclear energy fulfils conditions formulated in that judgment, then each citizen has to accept risks resulting from the nuclear energy sector. Covering the entire period of commercial usage of nuclear energy for power generation, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars and energy experts who are active in researching or adopting public policies related to the nuclear energy sector.

Though the Carter administration came to office committed both to good U.S.-Japanese relations and to a more stringent nuclear nonproliferation policy, it soon became clear that these objectives were at cross-purposes, and that the dispute over nuclear nonproliferation policy threatened to shake the alliance between the two countries. Professors Im