Gallup poll comes as
new campaign counters nuclear’s "clean energy myth"
It marks the first
time a majority in the country has felt this way about nuclear energy providing
electricity since Gallup began asking the question in 1994.
Forty-four percent
said they are still in support of it.
The new results show a
major shift from responses last year, when just 43 percent expressed opposition
to nuclear energy and support stood at 51 percent.
Republican support, in
particular, dropped steeply from 2015. Fifty-three percent now say they are in
favor of nuclear energy, compared to 68 percent last year. Thirty-four percent
of Democrats are in favor of nuclear energy, an 8-point drop from last year.
Even in 2012, the
first time Gallup asked the question after the Fukushima disaster,
57 percent of Americans were still in favor of nuclear energy.
As to why to tide has
turned, Gallup suggests it may be the result of lower gas prices, as they have
coincided with low levels of
worry about the nation's energy situation.
The poll comes a week
after the five-year anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, when said
Cindy Folkers, radiation and health specialist at the advocacy organization
Beyond Nuclear warned,
"Not only is there no Plan B for what to do if and when a Fukushima-style
disaster happens in the U.S., there is no Plan A to prevent one either."
And this week, the
Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) launched their #NuclearIsDirty
campaign, which aims to counter the myth of nuclear power as "clean."
Explaining the need
for the campaign, NIRS Executive Director Tim Judson wrote Tuesday:
You can’t build a “bridge” to clean energy on top of radioactive waste. Nuclear power is too expensive and too slow to solve the climate crisis, but it is also too dirty and too dangerous to justify. If countries choose nuclear as a climate solution, they are also choosing to target communities for everything that goes along with it: uranium mining and milling, radioactive discharges and leaks, radioactive waste … and of course, nuclear disasters. All of this adds up to mountains of long-lived and poisonous waste, leaching into groundwater; spilling into rivers, lakes and oceans; venting into the air; contaminating the land; and being ingested by humans, animals, and plants alike. That is the real story of nuclear power. And it has to be told.
