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Public perception of nuclear power and opinion surveys

Public perception
Private citizens generally feel excluded from the decision-making processes behind nuclear power. For many years, the authorities and players in the industry have sought to reassure the public by promoting the “social acceptability” of nuclear power through a variety of communication techniques. These efforts seem to have paid off: in the 1980s, EDF conducted opinion surveys around nuclear sites to measure social tension caused by the presence of a power plant. These showed that public opinion was rather stable and favorable to nuclear power.
But the lack of information on the contamination from the Chernobyl accident triggered strong demand for greater transparency. After the large-scale demonstrations of the 1970s, the anti-nuclear cause lost momentum in the 1980s once France’s nuclearization was completed. After Chernobyl, the movement was revived in the 1990s, as evidenced by the emergence of Sortir du Nucléaire (nuclear phase-out”), a network gathering more than 700 associations.
Opposition has also arisen in the scientific community, with organizations like CRIIRAD (Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity), which contests the government’s position on nuclear power and conducts its own public awareness initiatives.
Perhaps unexpectedly, the Fukushima accident, the biggest nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl, has not fuelled anti-nuclear protests in France. A demonstration organized in Paris two days after the first explosion at the Japanese plant drew a mere 300 participants. Unlike some of their neighbors (especially in Germany and Italy), French voters' political choices since Fukushima reflect their acceptance of nuclear energy. In the rest of the world, most of the countries with high-energy consumption (China, India, the US, the UK, Russia, etc.) have also reasserted their commitment to nuclear power.

Opinion surveys
How can one gauge more precisely what the French think of nuclear energy? As in politics, it all depends on who commissions the survey and on the polling institute that conducts it.
According to the most recent European poll (Eurobaromètre, published in March 2010), 45% of those surveyed are in favor of scaling back their country’s reliance on nuclear power, which represents a 6% increase over 2007. According to another survey, commissioned by EDF and conducted by TNS Sofres on March 15-16, 2011, 55% of respondents are not in favor of phasing out nuclear power, and 62% trust EDF to prevent any risk of a nuclear accident in France.
Meanwhile, an Ifop survey for Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (the Green Party) during the same period revealed that 70% of the French would like to see the country put an end to the development of nuclear power and shut down its nuclear plants (19% in the near future and 51% within the next 25 to 30 years).
As part of a survey carried out for the 2012 French presidential campaign, bringing together three research teams specialized in the study of elections, public opinion and political communication, a series of TNS Sofres–TriÉlec polls provided regular assessments of the level of support in France for the ongoing use of nuclear power. The proportion of respondents expressing a favorable or rather favorable opinion rose from 50% in October 2011 to 58% in December 2011, and 61% in February 2012. One year after the Fukushima accident, which prompted several countries to announce plans to abandon nuclear power in response to the public's growing hostility, the French seem to be more favorable to nuclear energy than ever before. This enthusiasm could be due to the media coverage of the events in Japan (which highlighted the safety of France’s nuclear sites and the Japanese authorities’ inept handling of the crisis), perhaps combined with what analysts call “political framing,” with politicians emphasizing the need for nuclear power.