IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fes/wpaper/wpaper76.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Nuclear and financial meltdowns; The impact of the Fukushima accident on the transition to a low-carbon economy

Author

Listed:
  • Alessandro Vercelli

    (DEPS University of Siena)

Abstract

The paper is articulated in two parts. In the first part the consequences of the Fukushima incident are briefly described and analyzed offering a post-Fukushima reassessment of the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power generation as compared to those of alternative energy sources. In the second part of the paper the intrinsic structural instability of the process of nuclear power generation is analyzed by comparing it with that of financial processes and showing that a thorough understanding of their critical dynamic nature puts serious constraints on their controllability. The Fukushima accident made evident, and further worsened, the shortcomings of the existing energy system based on fossil sources. A crucial consequence was that it reduced significantly the current and prospective contributions of nuclear energy to the global supply of energy aggravating for a foreseeable future a trend characterized by structural excess demand of energy. A persistent increase in the price of nuclear energy and, more in general, in the trend of energy prices may frustrate any attempt to resume a sustained rate of growth within the business-as-usual paradigm. This calls for a more rapid transition towards a low carbon economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessandro Vercelli, 2014. "Nuclear and financial meltdowns; The impact of the Fukushima accident on the transition to a low-carbon economy," Working papers wpaper76, Financialisation, Economy, Society & Sustainable Development (FESSUD) Project.
    • Handle: RePEc:fes:wpaper:wpaper76
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://fessud.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Fukushima-accident-and-impact-on-transition-to-sustainable-energy-system-working-paper-76.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Burgherr, Peter & Hirschberg, Stefan, 2008. "Severe accident risks in fossil energy chains: A comparative analysis," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 538-553.
    2. Andrew G. Haldane & Robert M. May, 2011. "Systemic risk in banking ecosystems," Nature, Nature, vol. 469(7330), pages 351-355, January.
    3. Vercelli,Allessandro, 1991. "Methodological Foundations of Macroeconomics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521392945, January.
    4. Didier Sornette & Susanne von der Becke, 2011. "Complexity clouds finance-risk models," Nature, Nature, vol. 471(7337), pages 166-166, March.
    5. Louis-Philippe Rochon & Sergio Rossi (ed.), 2003. "Modern Theories of Money," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2506.
    6. Massimo Guidolin & Elizabeth A. La Jeunesse, 2007. "The decline in the U.S. personal saving rate: is it real and is it a puzzle?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 89(Nov), pages 491-514.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alessandro Vercelli, 2014. "Financial and nuclear meltdowns: the fragility of chain-reaction critical processes," Chapters, in: Riccardo Bellofiore & Giovanna Vertova (ed.), The Great Recession and the Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism, chapter 12, pages 208-220, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Riccardo Bellofiore & Giovanna Vertova (ed.), 2014. "The Great Recession and the Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14637.
    3. Liu, Jiming & Shi, Benyun, 2012. "Towards understanding the robustness of energy distribution networks based on macroscopic and microscopic evaluations," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 318-327.
    4. Bunting, David, 2009. "The saving decline: Macro-facts, micro-behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(1-2), pages 282-295, May.
    5. Serena Sordi & Alessandro Vercelli, "undated". "Financial Fragility and Economic Fluctuations: Numerical Simulations and Policy Implications," Modeling, Computing, and Mastering Complexity 2003 20, Society for Computational Economics.
    6. Ernest Dautovic, 2019. "Has Regulatory Capital Made Banks Safer? Skin in the Game vs Moral Hazard," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 19.03, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    7. Hans-Joachim Dübel, 2014. "Transatlantic mortgage credit boom and bust - the impact of market structure and regulation," Chapters, in: Susan Wachter & Man Cho & Moon Joong Tcha (ed.), The Global Financial Crisis and Housing, chapter 6, pages 112-146, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Tam, Leona & Dholakia, Utpal M., 2011. "Delay and duration effects of time frames on personal savings estimates and behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 142-152, March.
    9. Yucesan, Melih & Kahraman, Gökhan, 2019. "Risk evaluation and prevention in hydropower plant operations: A model based on Pythagorean fuzzy AHP," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 343-351.
    10. Gamberger, Dragan & Smuc, Tomislav, 2013. "Good governance problems and recent financial crises in some EU countries," Economics Discussion Papers 2013-39, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    11. Till Treeck, 2014. "Did Inequality Cause The U.S. Financial Crisis?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 421-448, July.
    12. Guido Caldarelli & Matthieu Cristelli & Andrea Gabrielli & Luciano Pietronero & Antonio Scala & Andrea Tacchella, 2012. "A Network Analysis of Countries’ Export Flows: Firm Grounds for the Building Blocks of the Economy," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(10), pages 1-11, October.
    13. Fariba Karimi & Matthias Raddant, 2016. "Cascades in Real Interbank Markets," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 47(1), pages 49-66, January.
    14. Cetina, Jill & Paddrik, Mark & Rajan, Sriram, 2018. "Stressed to the core: Counterparty concentrations and systemic losses in CDS markets," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 38-52.
    15. Brett Fiebiger & Scott Fullwiler & Stephanie Kelton & L. Randall Wray, 2012. "Modern Monetary Theory: A Debate," Working Papers wp279, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
    16. Kanno, Masayasu, 2020. "Interconnectedness and systemic risk in the US CDS market," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    17. Bavoso Vincenzo, 2017. "“High Quality Securitisation and EU Capital Markets Union – Is it Possible?”," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 7(3), pages 1-29, December.
    18. Dror Y. Kenett & Xuqing Huang & Irena Vodenska & Shlomo Havlin & H. Eugene Stanley, 2015. "Partial correlation analysis: applications for financial markets," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(4), pages 569-578, April.
    19. Harald Schmidbauer & Angi Roesch & Erhan Uluceviz, 2013. "Market Connectedness: Spillovers, Information Flow, and Relative Market Entropy," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 1320, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum.
    20. Timothy Johnson, 2015. "Reciprocity as a Foundation of Financial Economics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(1), pages 43-67, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fukushima accident; nuclear power generation; critical systems; structural instability; financial crisis; climate change policy; carbon prices; low-carbon economy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B41 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - Economic Methodology
    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • Q01 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - General - - - Sustainable Development
    • Q28 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Government Policy
    • Q38 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation - - - Government Policy (includes OPEC Policy)
    • Q42 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Alternative Energy Sources
    • Q43 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy and the Macroeconomy
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fes:wpaper:wpaper76. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Helen Evans (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.