SG - Our Nuclear History

About Our Nuclear History

That nuclear power technologies are widely embraced has not always been the case. What changed and how did we get here? As a founding member of Nuclear Transparency Watch and nuclear expert for WISE, Jan Haverkamp traces the evolution of nuclear power and political dynamics between stake holders around it (1933 – 2010). He tours this history touching upon energy sovereignty, scientific developments, major calamities and shifting public opinion throughout the last century. How did nuclear power figure in with the political power in changing societies in (Eastern/Western) Europe? What have we inherited?

About Jan Haverkamp

Jan Haverkamp MSc (1959) is a senior nuclear energy and energy policy expert with the World Information Service on Energy (WISE) and Greenpeace Netherlands, and he is co-founder and vice-chair of Nuclear Transparency Watch. He is a Dutch citizen and since 2017 based in the Netherlands after having lived 21 years in the Czech Republic and Poland and having worked since 1985 in Central Europe.

His work as developer of environmental organisations in Central Europe, as energy campaigner and nuclear energy specialist brought him into contact with nuclear power and energy policy in all EU and EU accession countries operating, having operated or having taken moves to operate nuclear power stations, as well as Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Switzerland, Canada, Japan, South Korea, South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey, and the USA. He also worked for four years as Greenpeace's EU nuclear policy advisor in Brussels, among others during the start of the Fukushima nuclear crisis and the following nuclear stress tests. He was involved in the development and following implementation of the Euratom Nuclear Safety Directive, the Nuclear Waste Directive and the Directive on Basic Radiation Standards. He has a long track record on issues of nuclear transparency, especially the implementation of the Espoo and Aarhus Conventions in the nuclear sector. He participates as an independent civil society expert in the European nuclear waste research project EURAD.

Jan received his level 5B certificate as radiation protection advisor from the Technical University Delft. He was involved in radiation protection work in Spain, Japan, Ukraine and France.

Jan Haverkamp has taught between 2004 and 2020 at the environmental studies department of the faculty of social sciences of the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic.

He undertook a bachelor degree in biochemistry from the State University in Leiden, the Netherlands, and a bachelors and masters degree (academic engineer – Ir.) in environmental sciences from Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

He is married, has a son and a daughter in their twenties and three grandchildren.