Nuclear Energy

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Social aspects of nuclear energy

From the beginning, civil nuclear power has always been promoted as a peaceful form of “clean energy.” Based on a reliable, state-of-the-art technology, it offers a solution for achieving energy independence without petroleum, a limited resource that is found only in certain parts of the world. France chose to develop nuclear power, joining the many other industrialized countries around the world that started building nuclear plants in the 1960s and 1970s.

Then the first accidents began to alter public opinion, casting doubt on the advisability of this choice. In 1979, the nuclear leak at Three Mile Island in the United States highlighted the fact that many plants were located near densely populated areas. In 1986, the Chernobyl catastrophe in the Ukraine (then a Soviet Republic) demonstrated that the consequences of a nuclear incident could extend beyond a country’s borders. And in 2011, the Fukushima disaster showed that accidents are always possible, even in countries known for their technological prowess, like Japan.

Although the risk of nuclear accidents is theoretically very low, they do indeed happen and can have devastating effects, including the contamination of the environment and the evacuation of all the residents of the affected areas, often for an indefinite period of time. These consequences are the subject of in-depth studies, in particular because radioactivity is a phenomenon whose duration far exceeds the human lifespan.

There is also the issue of nuclear waste, for which an acceptable long-term solution must be found. Its effects concern at least several hundred future generations, in addition to the risk of an accident during transportation, which is always a possibility. Of course, many researchers and engineers are working on the safety of nuclear power plants and the management of their waste. Watchdog organizations like the Nuclear Safety Authority in France ensure compliance with standards, which are now the same worldwide. The objective is to reduce the risk of an accident as much as possible, which is mostly an economic consideration based on a cost-benefit analysis.
The Fukushima disaster focused public attention on the nuclear issue once again. The accident in Japan not only raised questions about the safety of nuclear installations but also led to a general rethinking of the relations between the nuclear industry and society. Long imposed as a political choice decided by the government, nuclear energy is opposed by many non-governmental organizations and private citizens. The Japanese have turned strongly against it, and the Germans have followed suit.

Nuclear energy is not just about technology. It is also a social issue that encompasses more than energy independence, economic perspectives and the requirements of sustainable development. The existence and awareness of its risks have an impact on the populations that has never been fully taken into account. For a long time the fear it engenders, whether justified or not, was ascribed to ignorance, and nuclear energy supporters in politics and industry tried in any way they could to influence the population at large, which was considered incapable of conceiving an informed opinion. Without a doubt, this approach had an adverse effect on the public debate for many years. But here again, things changed after the Fukushima accident. In July 2011, the French Academy of Sciences issued an opinion declaring that research on nuclear energy should not be the sole prerogative of the organizations that produce and deploy it, but should be pursued in universities and public research bodies like CNRS. This came as a sweeping endorsement of academic research as a whole, and especially of programs in the Humanities and Social Sciences, independent from the nuclear operators, which could help initiate a true public debate on the issue.