Toward a Cooperative Nuclear Safety Framework in East Asia

This book presents the first comprehensive comparative study of nuclear safety governance in East Asia and Europe, offering a novel analytical framework for explaining why regional cooperation has achieved coherence in some regions—notably Europe—while remaining fragmented in others, such as East Asia. Drawing on insights from network governance, high-reliability organization theory, and risk governance, the volume demonstrates how Europe’s WENRA-centered model has fostered regulatory convergence and effective cross-border crisis coordination without relying on supranational authority. By contrast, Japan, China, and South Korea continue to face persistent challenges of institutional fragmentation, political mistrust, and uneven regulatory capacity, despite shared risks and deep interdependence. At the core of the book is a proposal for a TRM+-centered governance architecture tailored to the political, institutional, and historical conditions of East Asia. The analysis identifies concrete pathways for harmonizing nuclear safety standards, strengthening emergency response coordination, and developing an epistemic infrastructure capable of sustaining long-term regional cooperation. By integrating technical, political, and sociological perspectives, the book advances a new understanding of how regions can collectively manage transboundary technological risks and lays the conceptual groundwork for the emergence of a future “nuclear safety society” in East Asia.