Explore the vast range of titles available.

The Indonesian national nuclear power agency (BATAN) is a classic example of a permanently failing organization that survives due to external support and frequent announcements of imminent construction of a nuclear power plant (NPP). Between 2009 and 2013 BATAN claimed the Slovakian nuclear power industry as its mentoring partner and inspiration in building an NPP in Bangka-Belitung. BATAN failed to mention the scandal-ridden state of the now foreign-owned Slovakian nuclear industry, its catastrophic past, and its nonexistent construction capacity. The Slovakia! Bangka campaign, baseless though it was in reality, functioned as a kind of informational fog of fantasy that deflected attention from domestic critics of an Indonesian nuclear program.

Investigations of the Fukushima nuclear power accident sequence revealed the man-made character of the catastrophe and its roots in regulatory capture effected by a network of corruption, collusion, and nepotism. A review of corruption incidents in the global nuclear industry during 2012-2013 reveals that the Japanese experience is not isolated. Gross corruption is evident in nuclear technology exporting countries such as Russia, China, and the United States, and in a number of nuclear technology importing countries. The survey results make clear that national nuclear regulatory regimes are inadequate and that the global regime is virtually completely ineffective. Widespread corruption of the nuclear industry has profound social and political consequences resulting from the corrosion of public trust in companies, governments, and energy systems themselves.

Japan is quintessentially by geography a maritime country. Maritime surveillance capabilities – underwater, shore-based and airborne – are critical to its national defence posture. This book describes and assesses these capabilities, with particular respect to the underwater segment, about which there is little strategic analysis in publicly available literature.

The Japanese navy began research on hydrophones in 1920, initially experimenting with foreign models, although it ‘failed to produce a workable copy’.¹ In the early 1930s, after further foreign purchases, it developed systems for installation aboard ships as well as on the sea bottom. The first ship-borne systems, the models 93 and 0, were based on the US MV-type hydrophone, which was imported in 1930; they were deployed aboard all Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) battleships and destroyers until being superseded in 1943. Research and development was primarily undertaken by the Acoustic Department of the Second Naval Institute at Numazu, on

The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) has at least 14 listening stations serving as shore terminals for the underwater hydrophone arrays, but which are typically also equipped with marine surveillance radars sites and electronic intelligence (ELINT) collection systems, and sometimes also with optical observation equipment. A report released by the Council on Security and Defense Capabilities in June 2004 identified 12 ‘coastal surveillance and intelligence collection’ stations (including those at Rebun Island, Wakkanai and Shibetsu in northern Hokkaido identified with Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) units).¹ The report did not, however, include the two ocean observation stations maintained by the

The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) installed its so-called ‘first generation’ hydrophone system at several of its new coastal defence stations in the mid-and late 1950s. This used drum-shaped hydrophones, 4 metres in diameter and 2.5 metres high, with a low discrimination capability.¹ The upward-looking arrays were mainly useful for harbour defence, but they could also be strung across key narrow straits. The coastal defence stations established in this period were located at Kannon Zaki, across the Uraga Channel leading into Tokyo Bay; Awaji, on the north-western side of Osaka Bay; Mutsure-jima, astride the entrance to the Kanmon Strait; and

The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) is commanded by the chief of the Maritime Staff, based at the Ministry of Defense (MoD) HQ at Ichigaya in Tokyo. From 1954 to 2006, he was supported by the powerful Maritime Staff Office (MSO), which was responsible for all aspects of supervision of the JMSDF, which includes the Self-Defense Fleet, five regional district commands (with HQs at Ominato, Yokosuka, Kure, Maizuru and Sasebo), the Air Training Squadron and various support units, such as hospitals and schools, and including operational command as well as administrative, personnel, training and capability acquisition matters (see Fig. 1).

The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) also has substantial responsibilities and capabilities for coastal surveillance and coastal defence, especially with respect to northern Hokkaido. These responsibilities have been maintained through adroit bureaucratic–political manoeuvring, but their origins go back to the early part of the 20th century when, in 1907, two years after the Imperial Japanese Navy’s decisive defeat of the Russian Baltic Fleet in the Battle of Tsushima, the army ‘reasserted its control over the determination of the nation’s strategic priorities’, with Russia being formally identified as ‘Japan’s prime hypothetical enemy’ and the army’s forward position on the Asian