Exploring Signals for a Nuclear Future Using Social Big Data

Abstract

Since the start of the new Korean government in 2017, the Korean nuclear energy system has undergone a major change. This change in national energy policy can be forecasted by analyzing social big data. This study verifies whether future forecasting methodologies using weak signals can be applied to Korean nuclear energy through text mining the data of web news between 2005 and 2018, comparing and applying the methodology to notable events (i.e., the UAE nuclear power plant (NPP) contract and nuclear phase-out). In addition, we predict what changes will be made in the Korean nuclear energy system post-2019. Keywords extracted through text mining were quantitatively classified into a weak signal or a strong signal using a Keyword Emergence Map (KEM) and a Keyword Issue Map (KIM). The extracted keywords predicted the contract of the UAE NPPs in 2009 and nuclear phase-out in 2017. Furthermore, keywords revealing future signals beyond 2019 were found to be ‘nuclear phase-out’ and ‘wind energy’. The weak-signal methodology can be applied as a tool to predict future energy trends during the current circumstance of the rapidly changing world energy market.