일본의 탈원전 정책 전개 과정 및 법제화에 관한 연구

초록

The Fukushima Nuclear Accident that occurred immediately after a catastrophic earthquake and Tsunami hit Tohoku area of Japan on March 11, 2011, cast doubts on the safety and sustainability of nuclear power plants not only in Japan but also around the world, thus providing strong incentives to reconsider its existing nuclear policy and triggering a momentum for the “Zero-Nuclear Power”. This paper explores the development of the Zero-Nuclear Policy in Japan, viewed in light of political and legal perspectives. This has a twofold purpose: on the one hand, the case study on Japan is likely to provide insights to South Korea, who has walked a similar nuclear path with Japan, and taking an interdisciplinary approach helps enrich our understanding of such highly sophisticated issues as nuclear policy, deeply-tangled with socio-economic structure in terms of energy consumption, on the other. For this, this paper first gives an overview of the history of nuclear power in Japan, and then pays attention to its move to the “return toward nuclear power” after the Zero-Nuclear declared when the Fukushima Nuclear Accident took place. This paper, accordingly, asks: why has Japan been returning toward nuclear power again even though they have suffered from such a tragic nuclear accident and declared once the “Zero-Nuclear” policy? Will Japan’s nuclear policy ever move away from the “Zero-Nuclear”? Four possible answers are articulated grounded on previous researches: 1) functional factor, which explains the return to nuclear power with regard to its eco-friendly and low-cost features, 2) political economic factor, which highlights firmly established nuclear advocacy coalition groups and interdependent relations between central and local governments on nuclear power, 3) institutional factor, primarily having been discussed based on path dependency theory, 4) domestic political factor, in which the power alteration from the DPJ to the LDP and conservative nuclear host local communities maneuver the policy’s destiny. In addition to these, lastly, this paper attempts to shed light on a “variable” of “overwhelming nuclear-zero public opinion and vigorous civil society movements,” which has been overlooked, but has a potential power to impede the move of retuning to nuclear power and simultaneously to lead the drive of the Zero-Nuclear policy. Together with this, this paper ushers and analyzes the “Bill for the Basic Law for Zero Nuclear Energy” proposed in March 2018 by the four opposition political parties initially initiated by the civil society in order to make a “society where no more nuclear power plants are needed”. It will provide some legislative implications to South Korea. Among many, this paper elucidates five issues in particular: 1) the period of nuclear phrase-out and its countermeasures, 2) a ban on the expansion and build-up of nuclear power plants, renewal of operation, and reprocessing nuclear waste, 3) the level and the scope of the state responsibility for promoting the pro-nuclear energy policy, 4) the level and the scope of the state responsibility for the loss of operators incurring from the implementation of the Zero-Nuclear Policy, 5) the reconstruction of the socioeconomic structure and the rebuilding of former nuclear host communities in response to the nuclear phase-out. Taken together, this paper admits that the bill aptly provides a framework and basic ideas, but asserts that there still remain many crucial issues under-discussed, specifically regarding the level and the scope of the state responsibility as acknowledging it in promoting the pro-nuclear energy policy and in implementing the phrase-out nuclear policy. In this regard, ceaseless endeavors to conduct theoretical reviews and interdisciplinary research on the issues are required and it will bring us to future research.

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