The Oceans in the Nuclear Age: Legacies and Risks

The advent of the nuclear age in 1945 fundamentally altered the course of human events. The oceans are not the focus of the nuclear age, but the affairs of the oceans are deeply woven into the history of that age. Knowledge of what the nuclear age has meant for the oceans, however, is highly fragmented and there exists a surprising gap in research on the impact of the nuclear age on the oceans and on ocean law and policy. Ranging from dumped wastes to transportation to security, this study frames the complex multidimensional set of relationships between the oceans and the nuclear age and illuminates patterns of impact and response in ocean law. This timely expanded edition includes a new chapter by Lt. Todd Hutchins, USN, on “Nuclear Risks in Coastal Areas: Legal and Regulatory Responses.” It provides a full discussion of the 2011 coastal Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster, together with analysis more generally of the challenges to the environment and to the legal order globally that are posed by coastal siting of nuclear power plants.

Professor David Caron is Dean of The Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London. He relocated to London in May 2013 from California, where he was the C. William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley and Co-Director of the Law of the Sea Institute. He currently serves, among other things, as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Rule of Law, member of the U.S. Department of State Advisory Committee on Public International Law, and as a member of the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law.

Harry N. Scheiber, M.A., Ph.D. (Cornell University), D. Jur. hon.c. (Uppsala) is the Stefan Riesenfeld Chair Professor and Chancellor's Professor, Emeritus, in the School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. He is Co-Director of the Law of the Sea Institute at UC Berkeley and is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, honorary life fellow and former president of the American Society for Legal History, and twice a Guggenheim Fellow. He has published extensively on ocean law, marine fisheries management, history of American constitutional law, and law and economic policy. He also heads the UC Berkeley Law School's Sho Sato Program in Japanese and U.S. Law and is Director of its Institute for Legal Research.