Nuclear energy tainted by fallout from Fukushima

A new poll out from UK research firm Ipsos MORI, referenced in Carbon Brief, suggests that the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant in March last year will seriously affect global energy policy, given the impact it has had on public perception of nuclear power. The poll suggests that social, cultural, economic and political factors continue to be more influential in swaying sentiment on nuclear power than fundamental measures such as power usage or energy dependency. According to Ipsos Mori figures, ahead of the Fukushima disaster, the International Energy Agency predicted new nuclear plants would add 360 GW of energy capacity before 2035, a prediction that was halved after the event.

 

SCIENCE 15:00 Poll: Fukushima’s consequences for the global energy mix









| March 15. 2012.15:00

The meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant in March last year has left an indelible mark on public opinion that will have a serious impact on global energy policy and public perception of nuclear power, according to a new poll out last week. But the extent to which Fukushima has shaped attitudes to nuclear is not straightforward and depends on social, political and cultural influences, the report concludes.

Ipsos Mori found the incident has had an impact on “all sectors, countries and players”.

According to its After Fukushima report:

“[T]he public supports [governments’] fundamental policy aims of protecting supplies, diversifying sources and stabilising costs. However, views on how governments should achieve this, and on the role of nuclear power in particular, are influenced by social, cultural, economic and political factors to a far greater extent than more fundamental measures such as power usage or energy dependency.”

Ipsos says understanding public attitudes to different energy sources is important for governments grappling with questions such as how to protect countries from energy shocks, how to displace fossil fuel use with renewables and whether nuclear power is a feasible solution.

The authors say:

“[These questions] are affected as much by politics as policy: public concern and acceptability are central. and therefore understanding public opinion and how this varies between countries is vital.”

Just as the UK’s mad cow disease scare still has people all over the world checking meat labels for their beef’s provenance, “there will be a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ Fukushima” effect, the poll says, which has renewed fears about nuclear power and contamination from the plant, whether realistic or not.

Global concern



Source: Ipsos Mori

Ipsos’s questions on public concern about energy and environmental issues reveals that while energy costs are high on peoples’s agenda, so is worry about the impact of burning fossil fuels on the environment. Nearly as high are concern about dependence on foreign-produced energy and risks from nuclear fallout.

Different fuels

Coupled with this, renewable sources receive significant public support in comparison to fossil fuels such as gas and coal. Nuclear is the least-supported. However, further questions reveal doubts about renewables’ reliability. Nuclear, coal, oil and gas, meanwhile, are considered more reliable.

Nuclear

The Fukushima disaster has already created shifts in the global energy mix. Ipsos quotes figures that suggest that before Fukushima, the International Energy Agency predicted new nuclear plants would add 360 gigawatts of energy capacity before 2035. After the meltdown, however, the IEA reduced this prediction by half.

But changes in global opinion on nuclear are different depending on country, and they appear to have been temporary, Ipsos says. In Britain, support bounced back to previous levels later in 2011.

These regional differences lends weight to the pollsters’ conclusion that social, cultural, economic and political factors influence views on how governments should achieve energy policy aims.

For example, the report concludes:

“[In Britain] there remains a high level of support for nuclear power resulting from an in-built resistance to dependency on other countries or single sources, while in Japan there is a clear economic imperative to retain nuclear power capacity which may explain why, even after Fukushima, support for nuclear power remains particularly high.”

In contrast, in Germany and Italy where there exist “political pressures and long-standing cultural aversions to nuclear power”, it has already been abandoned.

Conclusions

The trends evident in Ipsos’s findings reveal a complex picture, and suggest that policymakers need to get to grips with a wide range of different factors if they want to get public support for a particular energy approach. It’s particularly interesting, for example, that the polling suggests people really don’t like high-carbon energy sources, prefer renewables, and have concerns about their reliability – all at the same time. Perhaps most obviously, the poll also suggests that the societal side of the nuclear debate is far from over.