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Paper long abstract:

It is vitally important to correct failure trajectory of public policy centering on advanced and potentially high-risk technologies, utilizing relevant expertise appropriately. Needless to say, nuclear field is one of the most typical areas in that context. After the biggest failure in the history of nuclear power utilization, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident, Japanese nuclear policy should have been reclaimed based on the lessons learned from the disaster.

However, the results of well-known major post-accident investigations have not been referred in the process of that reformation. Critical deficits of Japanese nuclear regulation are still remained even after the establishment of new regulatory body NRA (Nuclear Regulatory Authority).

Also, it will clarify the existence of similar trajectory in Japanese high-level radioactive waste (HLW) management field. It is one-lap behind debate ongoing centering on the improvement/reformation of HLW management policy in Japan now, even though many Japanese experts are very familiar with the experiences of socio-technical difficulties in HLW waste management in other nuclear countries and lessons learned from those and have committed to international academic and administrational efforts to mediate those issues.

By qualitative analysis of policy documents and data from interviews, this paper will shed light on the reproduced or even enforced chain of "structural disaster" mechanism, which is formulated and suggested by Miwao Matsumoto based on the studies on socio-technical failures, behind these common-mode problems in Japanese nuclear governance. It will also discuss the roles and responsibility of STS scholarship reflexively to cut the chain of "structural disasters."