Understanding global security - Peter Hough

ACCIDENTAL THREATS TO SECURITY
Proponents of nuclear energy have long been irritated by the fact that the public in
developed countries have demanded far greater restraints on their activities than
other power stations with worse accident rates. In this case, of course, the calculation
is complicated by ‘fear of the unknown’ born not only of ignorance but of a genuine
lack of clarity as to the hazard presented by nuclear radiation. A more clear-cut
instance of rationality being distorted comes from contrasting public attitudes and
government policy on transport safety. Travelling by rail is demonstrably far safer
than travel by road but the sporadic horror of train disasters compared to the steady
background drip of car crashes compels governments to illogically favour the former
in transport safety expenditure. 1
The leading exponent of the risk society paradigm, Ulrich Beck, has also
advanced the thesis that the risk society is increasingly a global social phenomenon.
The new dangers destroy the pillars of the conventional calculus of security:
damages can scarcely still be attributed to definite perpetrators, so that the
polluter-pays principle loses acuity; damages can no longer be compensated
financially – it makes no sense to insure oneself against the worst-case
ramifications of the global spiral of threat.
(Beck 1999: 142)
Sub-global international accident and risk
management policy
The political fallout from nuclear power production
The high perception of risk attached to the production of nuclear power has made
this a contentious issue of domestic politics in many countries but has also promoted
a most literal form of spillover, inducing political cooperation between states. The
Chernobyl disaster, as much as Soviet–western rapprochement, was the spur for
the EC to launch the TACIS programme (Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth
of Independent States) in 1991 which gives grants to the successor states of the Soviet
Union 2 and has a strong focus on the modernization of the nuclear industry.
On the other side of the coin, concerns over the potential risk from nuclear
accidents in other countries have also served to sour relations between closely
integrated countries. Chernobyl was a key factor in instigating independence movements
in the Ukraine, where the plant was based, and in nearby Belarus. In both of
these Slavic Soviet Socialist Republics anti-Russian nationalism was less of a spur
for secession than the feeling of being treated as the USSR’s industrial wasteland.
Many of the Ukraine’s large Russian minority voted for independence and Belarus
has sought to maintain as strong as possible links with Russia since gaining
independence.
Further west, the desire of former USSR satellite states to be part of the
European Union’s integration project has brought nuclear safety questions to
the fore. The Austrian government, backed by public opinion, threatened to veto the
Czech Republic’s accession to the EU unless it halted the development of its Temelin
nuclear power station located near the Austrian border. The EU, satisfied by an
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