ABSTRACT
Nuclear power has long been promoted in the West as a limitless energy resource. A primary impetus for the movement into nuclear energy has been the rapid economic and energy growth being experienced in East Asia. East Asia is rapidly becoming the world’s largest producer of nuclear-generated electrical energy. Japan argues that it has developed nuclear energy primarily in response to limited resource endowments. South Korea has fundamentally changed its energy supply structure in only three decades. The roots of the Asian atom can be traced to the United States and its European allies. The evolution of highly centralized and technicized power complexes, built up over many decades, has prepared East Asia for an extensive nuclear program involving power reactors, research reactors and nuclear fuel cycle facilities. South Korea and Japan are confronting serious problems in finding sites for new reactors as well as for storing the waste that each country’s nuclear power system is currently generating.
