Acceptable Nuclear?
October 27th, 2008 by Fereidoon Sioshansi, EEnergy InformerTwo recent public opinion polls taken in the US and Germany suggest that the public opposition to nuclear power is not what it used to be.
A poll for ZDF, the German public sector TV channel, taken in August 2008 concluded that 54% of the respondents were in favor of extending the lives of the fleet of 17 operating nuclear reactors in the country – despite a political decision to phase them out (Germany To Reconsider The Nuclear Phase-out, Oct 08). That is the first time since the law was enacted that more than half the people surveyed said they wanted the existing plants to remain operational.
Perhaps more striking is a recent survey sponsored by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying arm of the US nuclear industry, which has been conducting annual surveys for some time, but has been shy about publicizing the results until recently.
Coming to a site near you
Partial location of proposed new US reactors
In its latest survey taken in Sept 08, 74% of Americans said they favored nuclear energy, a record. Ann Bisconti, president of Bisconti Research who conducted the survey said, “In the 25 years that I have been tracking public opinion about nuclear energy, I have never witnessed anything like this increase on all the measures across the board.”
Clearly, rising energy prices in general, higher petrol prices, concerns about energy security and rising awareness about global climate change plays a part in these new sentiments. Among other findings:
- 69% of Americans believe the US should build more nuclear power plants in the future;
- 89% agree that the US should take advantage of all low-carbon energy sources, including nuclear, hydro and renewable energy, to produce electricity while limiting greenhouse gas emissions; and
- 72% associate nuclear energy as a solution in addressing climate change.
F.P. Shioshansi
This post is extracted from EEnergy Informer, November 2008 issue.
October 28th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
You claim that NEI has been “shy” about publicizing the results of their public opinion research.
But if you got to the below Web address, you’ll find a publication detailing NEI’s polling going back to 1998:
http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/publicationsandmedia/newslettersandreports/perspectivesonpublicopinion
November 10th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Dear Eric McErlain, thank you for pointing out that NEI maintains records on prior polling, I had not heard much about the results previously and hence made the statement.
April 15th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Switching off? No thanks!
Talking about the German situation, we should also focus on… Sweden!
To sum up, the Swedish government finally gave the answer to the question “Swiching off?” at the beginning of last February: the decision of progressively closing the nuclear plants of the country was aborted. New plants will gradually replace the existing ones. Sweden was the first country that decided to give up nuclear energy thought, after the quasi-catastrophe of Harrisburg, US, in 1979.
And if, as you said, the public opinion is no longer against nuclear energy by a majority, the German policy might soon change. History has indeed showed that Germans often follow in Swedish energy policy’s footsteps. In a low carbon age, Germany could soon face carbon problems: the German GHG emission reduction policy is likely to be more and more affected by the progressive halt of nuclear plants. The renewable energies are indeed unable to provide for the base load needs of industry, thus massively resorting to coal and gas. The future emission goals could turn out to be unreachable for the country in these conditions.
Germany is now isolated, being one of the only European country with Austria for example that has marginalized nuclear energy. Their isolation, added to the reversion of the public opinion, could probably soon come to an end. And the German utility RWE is among those who are calling for “clean” energies, partly renewable and mainly nuclear. Its latest offer, called “RWE ProClimate Power 2011”, guarantees a “practically zero-emission power” to customers until the end of 2011, mainly thanks to the existing German nuclear power plants. But beyond, the German law will have to change, and allow these “young” plants to produce longer than they currently can, as the public opinion agreed to.
Nuclear is being more and more accepted it seems. Yet, problems still remain and we can wonder whether the construction of those plants could not be more massively combined to energy efficiency measures that would limit the energy need and thus problems linked to it: this spared electricity is for sure the cleanest and surest energy ever.
Source:
http://www.welt.de/welt_print/article3162793/Abschalten-Nein-danke.html
http://www.developpementdurable.com/politique/2009/02/A978/abandon-du-nucleaire-la-suede-revient-en-arriere.html
http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/en/104726/rwe-energy/press/press-release/?pmid=4002709
April 18th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Commentary of Acceptable Nuclear? October 27th, 2008 by Fereidoon Sioshansi EEnergy Informer
The US and Germany have not the same background concerning nuclear energy and more particularly from a political point of view. Indeed, The USA was a pioneer of nuclear power development and despite the setback after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.The US have boosted their nuclear developments since the 90’s. In Germany, the policy is radically different: Nuclear energy should be, a priori, abandoned 11 years from now. Therefore, public opinion, which is closely related to policy, could be different in the US and in Germany, but according to this article, public opinions seem to converge in the two countries in favour of nuclear development. Let’s try to explain this new tendency in public opinion that occurs in Germany, in the US and in France too.
First, it is clear that we entered a period in which the protection of the environment and climate changes are major political issues. Indeed, the Kyoto protocol, the “MDP” of Kyoto protocol, the Emissions Trading Schemes of European Union, the “Energy-Climate package” are examples of the tendency. Moreover, surveys showed clear public support for government incentives to reduce CO2 emissions and to all this kind of policies. Nevertheless, despite the willing of governments of being more environmentally friendly, all these projects are really ambitious and the means needed to succeed are huge. Thus, nuclear energy could seem a reasonable and realistic way to reach these objectives notably concerning greenhouse gases emissions.
Another reason which could explain these new favourable sentiments is the current economic context. Indeed, rising energy prices in general, higher petrol prices or the gas crisis with Russia and Ukraine at the beginning of the year (which occurred after the redaction of the article) show that economies are really dependents and can not keep being affected to such an extent by economic fluctuations any longer. Therefore, nuclear is increasingly considered as a more stable and sustainable supply.
Finally, information of the public is the key of this enthusiasm for nuclear. It is well-known that the more governments communicate on nuclear, the less populations consider it as dangerous. For example, German public has from now on an internet platform of information and learning on nuclear which is essentially aimed at young Germans. This is a strategic choice insofar as Germans, “who are opposed to a definitive nuclear exit as long as a reasonable energy alternative is not suggested”, are the youngsters who are between 18 and 30 years-old. More generally, in each country where public opinion is favourable to nuclear, there are real communication efforts from governments. The latter is more and more considering nuclear as a solution and consequently citizens increasingly hear about it; people are more informed and familiarized and less afraid of it.
May 4th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Civil nuclear energy in Europe was from the beginning the subject of a wide disparity of attitudes and strategic choices of countries. Some countries heavily engaged on the path of nuclear power, others refused vehemently. Italy and Austria, for example, were severely opposed by the 1980s, joined in the 1990s by Germany and Belgium. In contrast, Finland and France were in very quickly.
In the Eurobarometer survey published on July 08, it is showed that the support for nuclear energy has increased considerably in the European Union since 2005 and the share of supporters is now nearly identical (44%) to the share of opponents (45%). Respondents in countries that have operational nuclear power plants are considerably more likely to support nuclear energy than citizens in other countries.
I think this is interesting to add some elements concerning the public opinion in Europe, and in a report from the Thomas More Institute (Sept. 2008), it is showed that :
– 69% of Europeans believe that nuclear power is a solution to be less dependent with imported oil and gas.
– 45% of them don’t think that nuclear energy could be replace by renewable and energy efficiency in Europe.
– 53% consider the nuclear energy present more risks than advantage.
– 39% of them think the actual proportion of nuclear energy must be reduced.
Out of Europe, the Americans may have not fully embraced the use of nuclear energy because of concerns about potential health risks from a nuclear meltdown or the nuclear waste that power plants produce. The poll (from Gallup) finds that a majority of Americans, 56%, believe nuclear power plants are safe, but a substantial minority of 42% disagree.
On the FORATUM web site (http://www.foratom.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=28&Itemid=1095), we can read the idea that there could be little connection between the level of public acceptance and the policies being pursued by some individual governments. It could be concluded, therefore, that the real obstacle to the further development of nuclear power is political opposition, rather than negative public attitudes. But, if we consider Germany, even if the policy is against the nuclear power, we are faced with people in favour of nuclear energy.
In my mind, in Germany, this can be explained by three elements :
- Nuclear energy is a solution to produce electricity with low emissions (2,5 à 5,7 g/kWh electricity against 105 to 366 g for thermal production).
- Nuclear energy is cheap (30€/MW/h), stable and predictable.
- The energy security (10 times more uranium know-reserves against oil).
With the rising price of fossil fuels, many countries now consider nuclear energy as an essential source of energy. The countries of Eastern Europe want to build an authentic core supporting nuclear energy with France and Finland. Some countries, like Germany and Spain, remain hostile maybe because the contradiction between nuclear and renewables ?
May 27th, 2009 at 10:43 am
I’m sorry but all the answers proposed in the NEI survey are misleading. Mixing up nuclear with renewable is Absurd.
What if they ask people about radioactive waste, dismantlement problems, security, terrorism attacks,…?
Are you really thinking that those problems are completely disconnected with the nuclear choice????
Moreover, if all past surveys were so bad for nuclear-energy, why should we guide investment decisions now with implications of about ONE CENTURY from the results of the last pool?