by Li Yiu and Tomo Suzuki
International Comparison of Nuclear Power Plants’ Environmental Liabilities Calculations
Reflecting awareness of global warming, a sharp increase of nuclear power plants is expected across the globe. What accompanied with the growing number of nuclear power plants are ever heated debates around the use of nuclear energy which on one hand, is deemed as a clean, economic and sustainable energy source reducing carbon dioxide emission, while on the other is criticized as a potential threat to the environment and human health through radioactive contamination and nuclear waste disposal etc. However, the rapid growth of carbon dioxide emission amount in the worldwide declares that the more widely tapping of nuclear energy is an inevitable trend.
Therefore, more attention should be shifted from blindly criticize of nuclear energy use to the study of proper management of nuclear power plants. Among the wide array of management aspects, we intend to research on the environmental liabilities calculation associated to nuclear power plants. In the past, each jurisdictions set different rules to calculate environmental liabilities like the demolition cost of nuclear power plant and nuclear fuel wastes, which can reach to billions of dollars per plant, which often resulted in “convenient” projections allowing politicians and energy companies to establish many nuclear power plants without proper sustainability accounting. Those internationally diverse and “convenient” calculations lead us to doubt the truth and fairness of calculation results in various jurisdictions, as well as philosophies behind those calculation methods.
In order to provide a fair research on sustainable accounting, this research proposes to empirically explore the ways in which environmental liabilities are calculated in different nuclear power plants in different jurisdictions. The history, logic, theory, politics and consequences of calculations are to be investigated in Australia, China, India, Japan and the US.