ABSTRACT
Since its first development, civil nuclear power has been promoted as a safe mode of energy technology, promising an abundance of green and cheap electric power. However, the environmental, social, and political effects of nuclear accidents and disasters have changed the safety images and frameworks of civil nuclear use and its development. It is now accepted that two major nuclear disasters-at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) on April 26, 1986, and at the Fukushima Daiichi NPP on March 11, 2011, have impacted adversely on the safety of nuclear energy production. Whereas Chernobyl’s effect on nuclear safety was limited to the specific Soviet designed RBMK reactors,1 the Fukushima effect went worldwide. For example, after Fukushima, European Union countries launched stress tests and peer-reviews of European NPPs in 2011 and 2012.2 Among post-Soviet countries, Russia and Ukraine conducted stress tests based on the Western European Nuclear Regulators Association stress model.
