Premium
Is self‐regulation possible?
Author(s) -
Barkenbus Jack N.
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
journal of policy analysis and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.898
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1520-6688
pISSN - 0276-8739
DOI - 10.2307/3323575
Subject(s) - incentive , nuclear power , commission , bureaucracy , nuclear power industry , nuclear industry , business , government regulation , industrial organization , public economics , law and economics , economics , market economy , political science , finance , politics , law , engineering , ecology , china , nuclear engineering , biology
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's increasingly prescriptive regulation of the nuclear industry can have deleterious effects, perhaps the most serious being the shift in responsibility for safety from the utility to the NRC. Several factors account for this type of regulation including the nature and structure of the nuclear industry, public opinion and bureaucratic incentives, and the nature of the technology itself. The opportunities to create heightened industry self‐regulation (performance‐based regulation) deserve further examination. The key to self‐regulation is to structure incentives so that it is clearly within the nuclear utilities' interests to build and operate nuclear power facilities in the safest manner possible.