Anatomy of a black sheep: The roots of the Czech Republic's pro-nuclear energy policy

Nuclear energy is one of the cornerstones of the contemporary Czech energy policy. In the country of ten million people, six commercial reactors are on line and two to four new units have been envisaged by recent official documents. The Czechs seem to be committed to nuclear despite the contemporary trends in both the regional and European energy policies, which clearly favor renewable and/or more flexible conventional sources. In this article we examine the main drivers behind the Czech Republic's enduring interest in nuclear energy. The main line of reasoning is informed by Jack Snyder's strategic culture concept, which stresses cultural factors and factors related to the structural characteristics of a country's decision-making process in explaining how concrete policies come into existence. Since such a perspective is rather rare in the field of energy policy analysis, the broader aim of this article is to attract more scientific attention to explanations that go beyond standard techno-economical or systemic analyses.