Preliminary Nuclear Energy Literature Review

During the five years after the major accident in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant a number of reports from major international institutions (like IAEA and OECD NEA) and research organizations have drawn conclusions and lessons to learn from this terrible accident. These reports are the result of expert and scientific analyses carried out during the five years and they present ideal sources for both understanding what has happened and what can be learnt in order to avoid and mitigate effects from such events in the future. From a wider perspective it is also interesting to analyse the impact of nuclear accidents on research and development (R&D) activities. This paper analyses the published nuclear energy (NE) related research over the last 50 years, with focus on three major nuclear accidents: Three Mile Island (TMI), Chernobyl and Fukushima. It has been performed using Scopus tools and database, and is mainly focused on statistics related to the subjects, countries, keywords and types of publishing. It also analyses how responsive the nuclear energy related R&D is in regards to volume and subjects, and how that research is spread among most active countries. Clearly, nuclear power accidents result in increased and changed of research focus. Both accidents, Chernobyl and Fukushima had maximum share in all NE related papers at a similar yearly level (9% in 1991 and 12% in 2015 respectively). TMI peaked at the 2.5% share in 1982. Engineering is the most frequent subjects for TMI and cumulative NE related publishing. Medicine and Environmental Science subjects are the most frequent for Chernobyl literature. For Fukushima Energy subject is the most frequent with Engineering as close second. Total volume of publishing continuously rose till 1985, then decreased till 1999 recovering in 2003, rising significantly afterwards till 2012 with steady high level till today. English is used in 86% of all NE publications rising to more than 90% in the recent 5 years for all publications except related to Chernobyl (77%). All other languages have a small share (2% or less), except for Russian (14% for Chernobyl), Japanese (5% for Fukushima) and, more recently Chinese (6% of all NE related in recent 5 years) appears to remarkably develop. Overall, 25% of publishing issues from the USA, while a few countries (Japan, Germany, China, France, Russia and UK) are being distant second, with a share of around 5%. The top countries' share is considerably different related to the specific accident. USA has 32% for TMI with only Japan as distant second with 6%. For Chernobyl USA is still at the top, with Russia contributing 11%, UK and Ukraine are second (7-8%), France and Germany at third place (5-6%). Only for the Fukushima related publishing USA is not the first but second (16%) where Japan share is the highest (41%), with three countries around 5% (France, Germany and China). Preliminary analysis of dominant keywords was also performed. Presented statistics illustrates the potential for different insights from such review. In order to make more certain and specific conclusions further detailed assessment is necessary. This should include other databases, improved selection process, keywords assessment and consider yearly based trends.

SIMIC Zdenko;  WASTIN Franck; 

2016-08-17

Croatian Nuclear Society

JRC102313