Reframing nuclear power in the UK energy debate: nuclear power, climate change mitigation and radioactive waste

Abstract

In the past decade, human influence on the climate through increased use of fossil fuels has become widely acknowledged as one of the most pressing issues for the global community. For the United Kingdom, we suggest that these concerns have increasingly become manifest in a new strand of political debate around energy policy, which reframes nuclear power as part of the solution to the need for low-carbon energy options. A mixed-methods analysis of citizen views of climate change and radioactive waste is presented, integrating focus group data and a nationally representative survey. The data allow us to explore how UK citizens might now and in the future interpret and make sense of this new framing of nuclear power--which ultimately centers on a risk-risk trade-off scenario. We use the term "reluctant acceptance" to describe how, in complex ways, many focus group participants discursively re-negotiated their position on nuclear energy when it was positioned alongside climate change. In the concluding section of the paper, we reflect on the societal implications of the emerging discourse of new nuclear build as a means of delivering climate change mitigation and set an agenda for future research regarding the (re)framing of the nuclear energy debate in the UK and beyond.

Comparing Nuclear Power Trajectories in Germany and the UK: From 'Regimes' to 'Democracies' in Sociotechnical Transitions and Discontinuities

“…The UK debate has been characterised as being dominated by a 'securitisation' discourse (Toke, 2013) where options for deliberation are limited by discussions of 'the lights going out' and threats of climate change. Certainly, the range of issues discussed in new consultation systems in the UK are less diverse than in the 1980s public inquiry system arguably representing a 'post-political' situation (Johnstone, 2014), where wide ranging debate is often limited by a singular focus on C02 emissions alone 'trumping' other ethical considerations producing a 'reluctant acceptance' (Bickerstaff, Lorenzoni, Pidgeon, Poortinga, & Simmons, 2008;Corner et al, 2011) whereas clearly the issue remains politicised in Germany. Wittneben (2012) suggests that media reporting in Germany was more detailed and long-lasting in terms of coverage of the Fukushima disaster whereas in the UK attention was replaced on other issues, representing generally higher levels of reporting on nuclear issues in Germany than the UK.…”

Destabilizing Environmentalism: Epiphanal Change and the Emergence of Pro-Nuclear Environmentalism

“…However, public ambivalence, and the post-Fukushima resilience of the conditional and 'reluctant acceptance' of nuclear power (Bickerstaff, Lorenzoni, Pidgeon, Poortinga, & Simmons, 2008) are presumably both enablers and effects of UK energy policy, which has remained steadfast in its pro-nuclear position. A greater proportion of nuclear electricity in the future energy mix is supported by all leading political parties (with the exception of the Green Party), partly on the environmental grounds that it is 'low-carbon' but more reliable than wind and solar power, the principal renewable alternatives favoured by most environmentalists.…”

“…Technorationality in this context refers to the manner in which scientific progress (with nuclear science as its technological and theoretical pinnacle) becomes synonymous with social progress (Irwin, Allan, & Welsh, 2000). Abstract faith in science is related to techno-rationality, but emphasizes the hope that future scientific progress will solve the problems of today (Bickerstaff et al, 2008).…”

Scaffolding, software and scenarios: Applying Bruner's learning theory to energy scenario development with the public

“…Yet, arguably, public responses to energy options cannot be fully understood without taking into account the wider context in which choices need to be made. A notable illustration of this is the way in which, in recent years, nuclear power has been reframed in terms of its potential contribution to climate change mitigation and energy security [1]. One reason for the limited number of studies of public opinion of energy systems and emissions contraction scenarios may be the lack of tools available to help with the process.…”

“…In the academic literature, only one other UK research project has focussed on the public's views of energy system transformation as a whole [5]. The latter uses the energy-emissions calculator available on the UK Department for Energy and Climate Change website 1 , designed for the lay-user, and which has some commonalities with the GRIP software [6], [7] used here.…”