The reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) have confirmed that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (NPP) survived the initial earthquake impacts, but fell victim to the following tsunami. The 14-m tsunami well...

Extraction of natural gas from shale rock in the United States (US) is one of the landmark events in the 21st century. The combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing can extract huge quantities of natural gas from impermeable shale formations, which were previously thought to be...

The article addresses the potential role of geosciences in development of civilian nuclear power plants (NPPs). We firstly highlight the fact that the Fukushima accident of 2011 is different from previous major nuclear accidents at the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl in that the former was...

The market-oriented reform in electricity industry has become a global trend since 1980s. Although China's electricity industry has been reformed since 1978, the substantial reform has not been conducted until 1985. Before 1985, China's power industry had been absolutely monopolized by the...

Investigations before and after the Fukushima nuclear accident revealed nuclear accidents like Fukushima would have unlikely happened in a country with transparency and public participation regarding nuclear issues. However, this lack of transparency and public involvement is unique not only to...

Addressing climate change represents a governing the climate commons on a global scale. The “tragedy of the commons” might better be described as the “failure of governing the commons”. Hardin’s solutions were “centralized government” and “private property”, which have long...

China is leading the recent revival of nuclear energy programs. The Chinese government plans to increase nuclear generating capacity to 40 GWe by 2020, while the installed capacity is 8.6 GWe in 2007. In view of the enthusiasm shown for nuclear electricity throughout the country, the...

China's rapid economic growth has strained its power supply, as manifested for instance by the widespread 2008 power shortage. The cause for this shortage is thought to be the current Chinese energy pricing system, which is mainly government rather than market controlled. Government-regulated...

This paper studies the problem of location-quantity choice in a duopoly in which the wage paid by each firm is set by the corresponding monopoly union. Compared with the outcome obtained in location-price choice game, we find that the wage setting choice for both unions does not change in our...