Nuclear Power and Public Opinion_Kate

The public does not want to pay for new nuclear power. It is willing to pay for renewable energy.

We have to use a lot of money to create nuclear reactor. The utilities which we use to create nuclear reactor are too expensive. Banks think that it’s too risky to lend money for nuclear projects.  A new reactor are either get money from taxpayers ,through direct federal loans or tax payers –backed loan guarantees, or  from rate payer in few. According to polls commissioned by the civil society institute( march 2011 and February 2012),ORC international  showed that there are 73% opposed in 2011 and  72% opposed in 2012.

Americans think nuclear power is not clean energy , they don’t want to pay for it.

how should we preceed with nuclear power development?

There are 89% of all scientists,95% of scientist involved in energy related field,and 100% of radiation.

There were no significant differences between response from employed in industry ,government,and universities.  There was no difference between employee who had and had not received financial support from industry or government.

Public Misunderstanding

The most important misunderstanding is about the danger of radiation. The public views radiation as something very complex and poorly understood. In fact, it is one of the simplest and best understood of all environment agents. Another misunderstanding is the danger from reactor melt down accidents. Many people think that there will have more than thousands of dead from reactors accident or bomb attack , but in fact, The deaths of melt down accident are similar to the deaths of pollution contributed by coal burning. The difference from the air pollution analogy is that there would be only a tiny fraction as many deaths. The number of deaths from reactor melt down accident is equal to the number caused by coal-burning air pollution so there would have to be complete meltdown accident in somewhere of United States  but after more than 30 years of nuclear power, no one has ever seen first accident.

Even if all of misunderstanding are clear up , some people still don’t  accept nuclear power because they prefer to use solar energy instead.

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter4.html