Europes Nuclear Power Experiment

Europe's Nuclear Power Experiment: History of the OECD Dragon Project discusses the achievements of the Project, which is regarded as one of Europe's most successful collaborations in applied science and certainly the most important multinational technical collaboration in the field of nuclear energy. The Project is centered on the construction of a nuclear reactor that is to demonstrate the essential properties of a new system, designed to produce higher temperatures than could be achieved with the first generation of reactors. After a brief introduction to the political collaboration and technical development of the Project, this 28-chapter goes on dealing with the competitive forms of cooperation in nuclear energy and the function of the European Nuclear Energy Agency. The succeeding chapters survey various aspects of nuclear reactor and the Dragon Project Agreement, its long-term role, research and development, industrialization, and supervision by the signatories. Other chapters consider other details and contributions of various member countries in the Project. The concluding chapters discuss the Project's extension program and its achievements. This book is of value to nuclear power scientists and researchers.

SCOTT (copy 1): From the John Holmes Library collection.

This volume investigates nuclear energy policies in Western Europe over the entire post-war period, but with special attention to the two most recent decades. The comparative analytical perspective draws on the interplay between voters' attitudes, challenging movements, party competition, and coalition formation. Spanning more than 60 years and 16 countries, the researchers examine the underlying causal processes leading to the observed varieties of Western European nuclear energy policies. Based on a mixed methods approach using both structured case studies as well as quantitative analyses, the study shows that the nature of party competition under given institutional contexts is a key-driver for, as a rule, tactically motivated governmental policy changes and stability, respectively. Part I introduces the practical and theoretical relevance of the topic. It outlines the reasoning of the major scientific contributions with regard to nuclear energy policies, and offers a theoretical alternative to the previous literatures that has been predominantly movements-oriented. Additionally, it provides core economic and political indicators of the changing role of nuclear energy in the countries. Part II consists of seven in-depth case studies where the outlined theoretical perspective is applied. Part III consists of a general summary, short narratives of the countries not covered in case studies, qualitative comparison and an assessment of the factors for policy change from multivariate analysis.

Recent results on the nature of low-, intermediate- and high-energy nuclear forces as well as on the internal structure of nucleons and atomic nuclei are presented. Prospects to find a new state of the nuclear matter at extreme conditions that existed in the early Universe and the utilisation of the nuclear energy are discussed.