Anti-nuclear movement in the United States
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The anti-nuclear movement in the United States consists of more than 80
anti-nuclear The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, natio ...
groups that oppose
nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced b ...
,
nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
, and/or
uranium mining Uranium mining is the process of extraction of uranium ore from the ground. Over 50 thousand tons of uranium were produced in 2019. Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia were the top three uranium producers, respectively, and together account f ...
. These have included the
Abalone Alliance The Abalone Alliance (1977–1985) was a nonviolent civil disobedience group formed to shut down the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo on the central California coast in the United States. They model ...
,
Clamshell Alliance The Clamshell Alliance is an anti-nuclear organization founded in 1976 to oppose the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. The alliance has been dormant for many years. The group was co-founded by Paul Gunter, ...
,
Committee for Nuclear Responsibility The Committee for Nuclear Responsibility was formed as a "political and educational organization to disseminate anti-nuclear views and information to the public". The goals of the organization were a moratorium on nuclear power and the commercializa ...
,
Nevada Desert Experience Nevada Desert Experience is a name for the movement to stop U.S. nuclear weapons testing that came into use in the middle 1980s. It is also the name of an anti-nuclear organization which continues to create public events to question the morality ...
,
Nuclear Information and Resource Service The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit anti-nuclear group founded in 1978 to be the information and networking center for citizens and organizations concerned about nuclear power, radioactive waste, radiati ...
,
Physicians for Social Responsibility Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) is a physician-led organization in the US working to protect the public from the threats of nuclear proliferation, climate change, and environmental toxins. It produces and disseminates publications, p ...
, Plowshares Movement,
Women Strike for Peace Women Strike for Peace (WSP, also known as Women for Peace) was a women's peace activist group in the United States. In 1961, nearing the height of the Cold War, around 50,000 women marched in 60 cities around the United States to demonstrate aga ...
, and
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) is a non-profit non-governmental organization working "to bring together women of different political views and philosophical and religious backgrounds determined to study and make kno ...
. Some fringe aspects of the anti-nuclear movement have delayed construction or halted commitments to build some new nuclear plants, and have pressured the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. Established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the NRC began operat ...
to enforce and strengthen the safety regulations for nuclear power plants. Most groups in the movement focus on nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear protests reached a peak in the 1970s and 1980s and grew out of the
environmental movement The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement), also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse philosophical, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists a ...
. Campaigns that captured national public attention involved the
Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant The Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant (CCNPP) is a nuclear power plant located on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay near Lusby, Calvert County, Maryland in the Mid-Atlantic United States. It is the only nuclear power plant in the state o ...
,
Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant The Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant, more commonly known as Seabrook Station, is a nuclear power plant located in Seabrook, New Hampshire, United States, approximately north of Boston and south of Portsmouth. It has operated since 1990. With its ...
(by the
Clamshell Alliance The Clamshell Alliance is an anti-nuclear organization founded in 1976 to oppose the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. The alliance has been dormant for many years. The group was co-founded by Paul Gunter, ...
),
Diablo Canyon Power Plant The Diablo Canyon Power Plant is a nuclear power plant near Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, California. Since the permanent shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in 2013, Diablo Canyon has been the only operational nu ...
,
Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was a completed General Electric nuclear boiling water reactor located adjacent to Long Island Sound in East Shoreham, New York. The plant was built between 1973 and 1984 by the Long Island Lighting Company (L ...
, and
Three Mile Island 3 is a number, numeral, and glyph. 3, three, or III may also refer to: * AD 3, the third year of the AD era * 3 BC, the third year before the AD era * March, the third month Books * ''Three of Them'' (Russian: ', literally, "three"), a 1901 ...
.Giugni, Marco (2004).
Social Protest and Policy Change: Ecology, Antinuclear, and Peace Movements
' p. 44.
Beginning in the 1980s, many anti-nuclear power activists began shifting their interest, by joining the rapidly growing
Nuclear Freeze campaign The Nuclear Freeze campaign was a mass movement in the United States during the 1980s to secure an agreement between the U.S. and Soviet governments to halt the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons. Background The idea of simply ...
, and the primary concern about nuclear hazards in the US changed from the problems of nuclear power plants to the prospects of
nuclear war Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a theoretical military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear w ...
. On June 3, 1981, the
White House Peace Vigil The White House Peace Vigil is an anti-nuclear weapons peace vigil started by William Thomas in 1981. Thomas believed it to be the longest running uninterrupted anti-war protest in U.S. history. After Thomas's death in 2009, it was maintained ...
began and has continued day and night ever since, thanks to William Thomas and a small band of stalwart antinuclear activists who launched the "Proposition One Campaign for a Nuclear-Free Future" voter initiative in 1993 which led to a bill that has been introduced into the House of Representatives every session by
Eleanor Holmes Norton Eleanor Holmes Norton (born June 13, 1937) is an American lawyer and politician serving as a delegate to the United States House of Representatives, representing the District of Columbia since 1991. She is a member of the Democratic Party. Earl ...
. On June 12, 1982, one million people demonstrated in New York City's
Central Park Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West Side, Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the List of New York City parks, fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban par ...
against nuclear weapons and for an end to the
cold war The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
arms race An arms race occurs when two or more groups compete in military superiority. It consists of a competition between two or more states to have superior armed forces; a competition concerning production of weapons, the growth of a military, and t ...
. It was the largest anti-nuclear
protest A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration or remonstrance) is a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards an idea or action, typically a political one. Protests can be thought of as acts of coopera ...
and the largest political demonstration in American history.Jonathan Schell
The Spirit of June 12
''The Nation'', July 2, 2007.
1982 – a million people march in New York City
International Day of Nuclear Disarmament protests were held on June 20, 1983, at 50 sites across the United States. There were many
Nevada Desert Experience Nevada Desert Experience is a name for the movement to stop U.S. nuclear weapons testing that came into use in the middle 1980s. It is also the name of an anti-nuclear organization which continues to create public events to question the morality ...
protests and peace camps at the
Nevada Test Site The Nevada National Security Site (N2S2 or NNSS), known as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of th ...
during the 1980s and 1990s. More recent campaigning by anti-nuclear groups has related to several nuclear power plants including the
Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant The Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station is a nuclear power plant on the shore of Lake Erie near Monroe, in Frenchtown Charter Township, Michigan on approximately . All units of the plant are operated by the DTE Energy Electric Company and ow ...
,Fermi 3 opposition takes legal action to block new nuclear reactor
Indian Point Energy Center Indian Point Energy Center (I.P.E.C.) is a three-unit nuclear power plant station located in Buchanan, just south of Peekskill, in Westchester County, New York. It sits on the east bank of the Hudson River, about north of Midtown Manhattan. ...
,
Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Station was a single unit 636 MWe boiling water reactor power plant in the United States. The plant is located on an site adjacent to Oyster Creek in the Forked River section of Lacey Township in Ocean County, New ...
,Oyster Creek's time is up, residents tell board
''Examiner'', June 28, 2007.
Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station (PNPS) is a decommissioned nuclear power plant in Massachusetts in the Manomet section of Plymouth on Cape Cod Bay, south of the tip of Rocky Point and north of Priscilla Beach. Like many similar plants, it was co ...
,Pilgrim Watch (undated)
Pilgrim Watch
/ref>
Salem Nuclear Power Plant The Salem Nuclear Power Plant is a two unit pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant located in Lower Alloways Creek Township, in Salem County, New Jersey, in the United States. It is owned by PSEG Nuclear LLC and Constellation Energy. ...
,Unplugsalem.org (undated)
UNPLUG Salem
and
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant Vermont Yankee was an electricity generating nuclear power plant, located in the town of Vernon, Vermont, in the northeastern United States. It generated 620 megawatts (MWe) of electricity at full power. The plant was a boiling water reacto ...
. There have also been campaigns relating to the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant,Stop the Bombs! April 2010 Action Event at Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Complex
the
Idaho National Laboratory Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is one of the national laboratories of the United States Department of Energy and is managed by the Battelle Energy Alliance. While the laboratory does other research, historically it has been involved with nu ...
,Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free (2003)
Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository proposal,Sierra Club. (undated)
Deadly Nuclear Waste Transport
the
Hanford Site The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. The site has been known by many names, including SiteW a ...
, the
Nevada Test Site The Nevada National Security Site (N2S2 or NNSS), known as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of th ...
,22 Arrested in Nuclear Protest
''The New York Times'', August 10, 1989.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...
,Hundreds Protest at Livermore Lab
''The TriValley Herald'', August 11, 2003.
and transportation of nuclear waste from the
Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...
.Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (undated)
About CCNS
/ref> Some scientists and engineers have expressed safety concerns about specific nuclear power plants, including:
Barry Commoner Barry Commoner (May 28, 1917 – September 30, 2012) was an American cellular biologist, college professor, and politician. He was a leading ecologist and among the founders of the modern environmental movement. He was the director of the ...
,
S. David Freeman Simon David Freeman (January 14, 1926 – May 12, 2020) was an American engineer, attorney, and author, who had many key roles in energy policy. After working with the Tennessee Valley Authority, first as an engineer and later as an attorne ...
,
John Gofman John William Gofman (21 September 1918 – 15 August 2007) was an American scientist and advocate. He was Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley. Gofman pioneered the field of clinical lipidol ...
,
Arnold Gundersen Arnold "Arnie" Gundersen (born January 4, 1949 in Elizabeth, New Jersey) is a former nuclear industry executive, and engineer with more than 44 years of nuclear industry experience who became a whistleblower in 1990. Gundersen has written dozens of ...
, Mark Z. Jacobson,
Amory Lovins Amory Bloch Lovins (born November 13, 1947) is an American writer, physicist, and former chairman/chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has written on energy policy and related areas for four decades, and served on the US Nationa ...
, Arjun Makhijani, Gregory Minor, M.V. Ramana, Joseph Romm and
Benjamin K. Sovacool Benjamin K. Sovacool is an American academic who is director of the Institute for Global Sustainability at Boston University as well as Professor of Earth and Environment at Boston University. He was formerly Director of the Danish Center for Ene ...
. Scientists who have opposed nuclear weapons include Paul M. Doty,
Hermann Joseph Muller Hermann Joseph Muller (December 21, 1890 – April 5, 1967) was an American geneticist, educator, and Nobel laureate best known for his work on the physiological and genetic effects of radiation (mutagenesis), as well as his outspoken political ...
,
Linus Pauling Linus Carl Pauling (; February 28, 1901August 19, 1994) was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific top ...
,
Eugene Rabinowitch Eugene Rabinowitch (1901–1973) was a Russian-born American biophysicist who is known for his work in photosynthesis and nuclear energy. He was a co-author of the Franck Report and a co-founder in 1945 of the '' Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ...
, M.V. Ramana and Frank N. von Hippel.


Emergence of the movement


Emergence of the anti-nuclear weapons movement

On November 1, 1961, at the height of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, about 50,000 women brought together by
Women Strike for Peace Women Strike for Peace (WSP, also known as Women for Peace) was a women's peace activist group in the United States. In 1961, nearing the height of the Cold War, around 50,000 women marched in 60 cities around the United States to demonstrate aga ...
marched in 60 cities in the United States to demonstrate against
nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
. It was the largest national women's peace protest of the 20th century. The nuclear debate initially was about nuclear weapons policy, and began within the scientific community. Scientific concern about the adverse health effects arising from atmospheric
nuclear weapons testing Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, Nuclear weapon yield, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detona ...
first emerged in 1954. Professional associations such as the
Federation of Atomic Scientists The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is an American nonprofit global policy think tank with the stated intent of using science and scientific analysis to attempt to make the world more secure. FAS was founded in 1946 by scientists who wo ...
and the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs were involved. The National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy was formed in November 1957, and surveys showed rising public uneasiness about the nuclear arms race—especially atmospheric nuclear weapons tests that sent
radioactive fallout Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioac ...
around the globe. In 1962, Linus Pauling won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to stop the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, and the "Ban the Bomb" movement spread throughout the United States. Between 1945 and 1992, the United States maintained a program of vigorous nuclear weapons testing. A total of 1,054 nuclear tests and two nuclear attacks were conducted, with over 900 of them at the
Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...
Test Site ''Test Site'' was an art installation, that was displayed in the turbine hall of Tate Modern in London, UK, between October 2006 and 9 April 2007. ''Test Site'' was designed like Carsten Höller, and was the seventh commission of the series of w ...
, and ten on miscellaneous sites in the United States (
Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...
,
Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...
,
Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
, and
New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...
). Until November 1962, the vast majority of the U.S. tests were above-ground; after the acceptance of the
Partial Test Ban Treaty The Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) is the abbreviated name of the 1963 Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, which prohibited all nuclear weapons testing, test detonations of nuclear weapons exce ...
all testing was relegated underground, in order to prevent the dispersion of
nuclear fallout Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioac ...
. The U.S. program of atmospheric nuclear testing exposed some people to the hazards of fallout. Since the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990, more than $1.38 billion in compensation has been approved. The money is going to people who took part in the tests, notably at the Nevada Test Site, and to others exposed to the radiation.What governments offer to victims of nuclear tests
''The Associated Press'', March 24, 2009.


Emergence of the anti-nuclear power movement

Unexpectedly high costs in the nuclear weapons program, along with competition with the Soviet Union and a desire to spread democracy through the world, created pressure on federal officials to develop a civilian nuclear power industry that could help justify the government's considerable expenditures."John Byrne and Steven M. Hoffman (1996). ''Governing the Atom: The Politics of Risk'', Transaction Publishers, p. 136. The
Atomic Energy Act of 1954 The Atomic Energy Act of 1954, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2011-2021, 2022-2286i, 2296a-2297h-13, is a United States federal law that covers for the development, regulation, and disposal of nuclear materials and facilities in the United States. It was an ame ...
encouraged private corporations to build nuclear reactors and a significant learning phase followed with many early partial
core meltdown A nuclear meltdown (core meltdown, core melt accident, meltdown or partial core melt) is a severe nuclear reactor accident that results in core damage from overheating. The term ''nuclear meltdown'' is not officially defined by the Internatio ...
s and accidents at experimental reactors and research facilities. This led to the introduction of the Price-Anderson Act in 1957, which was, "an implicit admission that nuclear power provided risks that producers were unwilling to assume without federal backing." The Price-Anderson Act "shields nuclear utilities, vendors and suppliers against liability claims in the event of a catastrophic accident by imposing an upper limit on private sector liability." Without such protection, private companies were unwilling to become involved. No other technology in the history of American industry has enjoyed such continuing blanket protection. The first U.S. reactor to face public opposition was Fermi 1 in 1957. It was built approximately 30 miles from Detroit and there was opposition from the
United Auto Workers Union The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers (UAW), is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States (including Puerto Rico ...
.
Pacific Gas & Electric The Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is an American investor-owned utility (IOU). The company is headquartered in the Pacific Gas & Electric Building, in San Francisco, California. PG&E provides natural gas and electricity to 5.2 milli ...
planned to build the first commercially viable
nuclear power plant A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a electric generator, generato ...
in the US at
Bodega Bay Bodega Bay ( es, Bahía Bodega) is a shallow, rocky inlet of the Pacific Ocean on the coast of northern California in the United States. It is approximately across and is located approximately northwest of San Francisco and west of Santa Ros ...
, north of
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
. The proposal was controversial and conflict with local citizens began in 1958.Paula Garb
Review of Critical Masses
''Journal of Political Ecology'', Vol 6, 1999.
The proposed plant site was close to the
San Andreas fault The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonics, tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is Fault (geology)#Strike-slip fau ...
and the region's environmentally sensitive fishing and dairy industries. The
Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who be ...
became actively involved in the controversy. The conflict ended in 1964, with the forced abandonment of plans for the Bodega Bay power plant. Historian
Thomas Wellock Thomas Wellock (born 1959) is the American historian for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Trained as both an engineer and a historian, he writes scholarly histories of the regulation of commercial nuclear energy. His most recent book is ' ...
traces the birth of the
anti-nuclear movement The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, natio ...
in the United States to the controversy over Bodega Bay. Attempts to build a nuclear power plant in Malibu were similar to those at Bodega Bay and were also abandoned. A small military test reactor exploded at the Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One in Idaho Falls in January 1961, causing 3 fatalities. This was caused by a combination of dangerous reactor design plus either sabotage, operator error by experienced operators. A further partial meltdown at the
Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station The Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station is a nuclear power plant on the shore of Lake Erie near Monroe, in Frenchtown Charter Township, Michigan on approximately . All units of the plant are operated by the DTE Energy Electric Company and ow ...
in Michigan in 1966. In his 1963 book ''Change, Hope and the Bomb'', David E. Lilienthal criticized nuclear developments, particularly the nuclear industry's failure to address the
nuclear waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons r ...
question. He argued that it would be "particularly irresponsible to go ahead with the construction of full scale nuclear power plants without a safe method of nuclear waste disposal having been demonstrated." However, Lilienthal stopped short of a blanket rejection of nuclear power. His view was that a more cautious approach was necessary. Samuel Walker, in his book '' Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective'', explains that the growth of the nuclear industry in the U.S. occurred as the
environmental movement The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement), also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse philosophical, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists a ...
was being formed. Environmentalists saw the advantages of nuclear power in reducing air pollution, but became critical of nuclear technology on other grounds. The view that nuclear power was better for the environment than conventional fuels was partially undermined in the late 1960s when major controversy erupted over the effects of waste heat from nuclear plants on water quality. The nuclear industry "gradually and reluctantly took action to reduce thermal pollution by building cooling towers or ponds for plants on inland waterways."Walker, J. Samuel (2004). ''
Three Mile Island 3 is a number, numeral, and glyph. 3, three, or III may also refer to: * AD 3, the third year of the AD era * 3 BC, the third year before the AD era * March, the third month Books * ''Three of Them'' (Russian: ', literally, "three"), a 1901 ...
: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective'' (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 10
Several authors challenged the prevailing view that the small amounts of radioactivity released by nuclear power plants during normal operation were not a problem. They argued "that the routine releases were a severe threat to public health and could cause tens of thousands of deaths from cancer each year." Exchange of views about radiation risks caused uneasiness about nuclear power, especially among those unable to evaluate the conflicting claims. The large size of nuclear plants ordered during the late 1960s raised new safety questions and created fears of a severe reactor accident that would send large quantities of radioactivity into the environment. In the early 1970s, a highly contentious debate over the performance of emergency core cooling systems in nuclear plants, designed to prevent a core meltdown that could lead to the " China syndrome", received coverage in the popular media and technical journals.Walker, J. Samuel (2004).
Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective
' (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 10–11.
The emergency core cooling systems controversy opened up whether the AECs first priority was promotion of the nuclear industry or protection of public health and safety.John Byrne and Steven M. Hoffman (1996). ''Governing the Atom: The Politics of Risk'', Transaction Publishers, p. 144. By the early 1970s, anti-nuclear activity had increased dramatically in conjunction with concerns about nuclear safety and criticisms of a policy-making process that allowed little voice for these concerns. Initially scattered and organized at the local level, opposition to nuclear power became a national movement by the mid-1970s when such groups as the
Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who be ...
,
Friends of the Earth Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) is an international network of environmental organizations in 73 countries. The organization was founded in 1969 in San Francisco by David Brower, Donald Aitken and Gary Soucie after Brower's split with ...
,
Natural Resources Defense Council The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a United States-based 501(c)(3) non-profit international environmental advocacy group, with its headquarters in New York City and offices in Washington D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Bo ...
,
Union of Concerned Scientists The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a nonprofit science advocacy organization based in the United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. Anne Kapuscinski, Professor of Environmenta ...
, and
Critical Mass In nuclear engineering, a critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The critical mass of a fissionable material depends upon its nuclear properties (specifically, its nuclear fissi ...
became involved.John Byrne and Steven M. Hoffman (1996). ''Governing the Atom: The Politics of Risk'', Transaction Publishers, p. 205. With the rise of environmentalism in the 1970s, the anti-nuclear movement grew substantially:
In 1975–76, ballot initiatives to control or halt the growth of nuclear power were introduced in eight western states. Although they enjoyed little success at the polls, the controls they sought to impose were sometimes adopted in part by state legislature, most notably in California. Interventions in plant licensing proceedings increased, often focusing on technical issues related to safety. This widespread popular ferment kept the issue before the public and contributed to growing public skepticism about nuclear power.
Another major area of ongoing concern was
nuclear waste management Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons ...
. The absence of a working waste management facility became an important issue by the mid-1970s:
In 1976, the
California Energy Commission The California Energy Commission, formally the Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, is the primary energy policy and planning agency for California. Created in 1974 and headquartered in Sacramento, the Commission'core respon ...
announced that it would not approve any more nuclear plants unless the utilities could specify fuel and waste disposal costs, an impossible task without decision on reprocessing, spent fuel storage and waste disposal. By the late 1970s, over thirty states had passed legislation regulating various activities associated with nuclear waste.
Many technologies and materials associated with the creation of a nuclear power program have a dual-use capability, in that they can be used to make
nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
if a country chooses to do so. In 1975 over 2,000 prominent scientists signed a Declaration on Nuclear Power, prepared by the
Union of Concerned Scientists The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a nonprofit science advocacy organization based in the United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. Anne Kapuscinski, Professor of Environmenta ...
, warning of the dangers of
nuclear proliferation Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized as " Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Wea ...
and urging the President and Congress to suspend the exportation of nuclear power to other countries, and reduce domestic construction until major problems were resolved. Theodore Taylor, a former nuclear weapons designer, explained, "the ease with which nuclear bombs could be manufactured if fissionable material was available." In 1976, four nuclear engineers - three from GE and one from the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. Established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the NRC began operat ...
- resigned, stating that nuclear power was not as safe as their superiors were claiming. These men were engineers who had spent most of their working life building reactors, and their defection galvanized anti-nuclear groups across the country. They testified to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy that:
the cumulative effect of all design defects and deficiencies in the design, construction and operations of nuclear power plants makes a nuclear power plant accident, in our opinion, a certain event. The only question is when, and where.Mark Hertsgaard (1983). ''Nuclear Inc. The Men and Money Behind Nuclear Energy'', Pantheon Books, New York, p. 72.
These issues, together with a series of other environmental, technical, and public health questions, made nuclear power the source of acute controversy. Public support, which was strong in the early 1960s, had been shaken. ''Forbes'', in the September 1975 issue, reported that "the anti-nuclear coalition has been remarkably successful ... ndhas certainly slowed the expansion of nuclear power." By the mid-1970s anti-nuclear activism, fueled by dissenting experts, had moved beyond local protests and politics to gain a wider appeal and influence. Although it lacked a single coordinating organization, and did not have uniform goals, it emerged as a movement sharply focused on opposing nuclear power, and the movement's efforts gained a great deal of national attention. On March 28, 1979, equipment failures and operator error contributed to loss of coolant and a partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania. The
World Nuclear Association World Nuclear Association is the international organization that promotes nuclear power and supports the companies that comprise the global nuclear industry. Its members come from all parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium mining, ur ...
has stated that cleanup of the damaged nuclear reactor system at TMI-2 took nearly 12 years and cost approximately US$973 million.World Nuclear Association
Three Mile Island Accident
January 2010.
Benjamin K. Sovacool Benjamin K. Sovacool is an American academic who is director of the Institute for Global Sustainability at Boston University as well as Professor of Earth and Environment at Boston University. He was formerly Director of the Danish Center for Ene ...
, in his 2007 preliminary assessment of major energy accidents, estimated that the TMI accident caused a total of $2.4 billion in property damages. The health effects of the Three Mile Island accident are widely, but not universally, agreed to be very low level. The accident triggered protests around the world.
Mark Hertsgaard Mark Hertsgaard (born 1956) is an American journalist and the co-founder and executive director of Covering Climate Now. He is the environment correspondent for ''The Nation'', and the author of seven non-fiction books, including ''Earth Odyssey ...
(1983). ''Nuclear Inc. The Men and Money Behind Nuclear Energy'', Pantheon Books, New York, p. 95 & 97.
The 1979 Three Mile Island accident inspired Perrow's book ''
Normal Accidents ''Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies'' is a 1984 book by Yale sociologist Charles Perrow, which provides a detailed analysis of complex systems from a sociological perspective. It was the first to "propose a framework for charac ...
'', where a
nuclear accident A nuclear and radiation accident is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as "an event that has led to significant consequences to people, the environment or the facility. Examples include lethal effects to individuals, lar ...
occurs, resulting from an unanticipated interaction of multiple failures in a complex system. TMI was an example of a normal accident because it was "unexpected, incomprehensible, uncontrollable and unavoidable."
Perrow concluded that the failure at Three Mile Island was a consequence of the system's immense complexity. Such modern high-risk systems, he realized, were prone to failures however well they were managed. It was inevitable that they would eventually suffer what he termed a 'normal accident'. Therefore, he suggested, we might do better to contemplate a radical redesign, or if that was not possible, to abandon such technology entirely.
Nuclear power plants are a complex energy system.Storm van Leeuwen, Jan (2008)
Nuclear power – the energy balance
/ref> and opponents of nuclear power have criticized the sophistication and complexity of the technology.
Helen Caldicott Helen Mary Caldicott (born 7 August 1938) is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate. She founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear we ...
has said: "in essence, a nuclear reactor is just a very sophisticated and dangerous way to boil water – analogous to cutting a pound of butter with a chain saw." These critics of nuclear power advocate the use of
energy conservation Energy conservation is the effort to reduce wasteful energy consumption by using fewer energy services. This can be done by using energy more effectively (using less energy for continuous service) or changing one's behavior to use less service (f ...
,
efficient energy use Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the process of reducing the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, insulating a building allows it to use less heating and cooling energy to ...
, and appropriate
renewable energy Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy ...
technologies to create our energy future.Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (undated)
Why Nuclear is Risky
Amory Lovins Amory Bloch Lovins (born November 13, 1947) is an American writer, physicist, and former chairman/chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has written on energy policy and related areas for four decades, and served on the US Nationa ...
, from the
Rocky Mountain Institute RMI (Rocky Mountain Institute) is an organization in the United States co-founded by Amory Lovins dedicated to research, publication, consulting, and lecturing in the field of sustainability, with a focus on profitable innovations for energy an ...
, has argued that centralized electricity systems with giant power plants are becoming obsolete. In their place are emerging "distributed resources"—smaller, decentralized electricity supply sources (including efficiency) that are cheaper, cleaner, less risky, more flexible, and quicker to deploy. Such technologies are often called " soft energy technologies" and Lovins viewed their impacts as more gentle, pleasant, and manageable than hard energy technologies such as nuclear power. Nuclear energy systems have a long stay time. The completion of the sequence of activities related to one commercial nuclear power station, from the start of construction through the safe disposal of its last radioactive waste, may take 100–150 years.


Emergence of the anti-uranium movement

Uranium mining is the process of extraction of
uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...
ore from the ground. A prominent use of uranium from mining is as fuel for
nuclear power plant A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a electric generator, generato ...
s. After mining uranium ores, they are normally processed by grinding the ore materials to a uniform particle size and then treating the ore to extract the uranium by chemical leaching. The milling process commonly yields dry powder-form material consisting of natural uranium, "
yellowcake Yellowcake (also called urania) is a type of uranium concentrate powder obtained from leach solutions, in an intermediate step in the processing of uranium ores. It is a step in the processing of uranium after it has been mined but before f ...
", which is sold on the uranium market as U3O8, and uranium mining can use large amounts of water. The
Church Rock uranium mill spill The Church Rock uranium mill spill occurred in the U.S. state of New Mexico on July 16, 1979, when United Nuclear Corporation's tailings disposal pond at its uranium mill in Church Rock breached its dam. The accident remains the largest release ...
occurred in
New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...
on July 16, 1979, when United Nuclear Corporation's Church Rock uranium mill
tailings In mining, tailings are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are different to overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overlie ...
disposal pond breached its dam. Over 1,000 tons of solid radioactive mill waste and 93 million gallons of acidic, radioactive tailings solution flowed into the
Puerco River The Puerco River or Rio Puerco is a tributary of the Little Colorado River in northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona. It flows through arid terrain, including the Painted Desert. Name The Puerco River is sometimes called Rio Puerco ...
, and contaminants traveled downstream to
Navajo County, Arizona Navajo County is in the northern part of the U.S. state of Arizona. As of the 2020 census, its population was 106,717. The county seat is Holbrook. Navajo County comprises the Show Low, Arizona Micropolitan Statistical Area. Navajo County co ...
and onto the
Navajo Nation The Navajo Nation ( nv, Naabeehó Bináhásdzo), also known as Navajoland, is a Native American reservation in the United States. It occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah; at roughly , the ...
. The accident released more radioactivity than the
Three Mile Island accident The Three Mile Island accident was a partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island, Unit 2 (TMI-2) reactor in Pennsylvania, United States. It began at 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979. It is the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclea ...
that occurred four months earlier and was the largest release of radioactive material in U.S. history.US Congress, House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment. ''Mill Tailings Dam Break at Church Rock, New Mexico'', 96th Cong, 1st Sess (October 22, 1979):19–24.
Groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidate ...
near the spill was contaminated and the Puerco rendered unusable by local residents, who were not immediately aware of the toxic danger. Despite efforts made in cleaning up uranium sites, significant problems stemming from the legacy of uranium development still exist today on the Navajo Nation and in the states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Hundreds of abandoned mines have not been cleaned up and present environmental and health risks in many communities. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that there are 4000 mines with documented uranium production, and another 15,000 locations with uranium occurrences in 14 western states, most found in the Four Corners area and Wyoming. The ''
Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act The Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act (1978) is a United States environmental law that amended the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to establish health and environmental standards for the stabil ...
'' is a
United States environmental law United States environmental law concerns legal standards to protect human health and improve the natural environment of the United States. While subject to criticism at home and abroad on issues of protection, enforcement, and over-regulation, th ...
that amended the
Atomic Energy Act of 1954 The Atomic Energy Act of 1954, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2011-2021, 2022-2286i, 2296a-2297h-13, is a United States federal law that covers for the development, regulation, and disposal of nuclear materials and facilities in the United States. It was an ame ...
and gave the
Environmental Protection Agency A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...
the authority to establish health and environmental standards for the stabilization,
restoration Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to: * Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage ** Audio restoration ** Film restoration ** Image restoration ** Textile restoration * Restoration ecology ...
, and disposal of uranium mill waste. Anti-uranium activists in the US include:
Thomas Banyacya Thomas Banyacya, Sr. (June 2, 1909 – February 6, 1999) was a Hopi Native American traditional leader. Biography Thomas Banyacya was born on June 2, 1909 and grew up in the village of Moenkopi, Arizona. He was a member of the Wolf, Fox, ...
,
Manuel Pino Manuel may refer to: People * Manuel (name) * Manuel (Fawlty Towers), a fictional character from the sitcom ''Fawlty Towers'' * Charlie Manuel, manager of the Philadelphia Phillies * Manuel I Komnenos, emperor of the Byzantine Empire * M ...
and
Floyd Red Crow Westerman Floyd Westerman, also known as ''Kanghi Duta'' ("Red Crow" in Dakota) (August 17, 1936 – December 13, 2007), was a Dakota Sioux musician, political activist, and actor. After establishing a career as a country music singer, later in his life ...
.


Specific groups

Anti-nuclear organizations Anti-nuclear organizations may oppose uranium mining, nuclear power, and/or nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear groups have undertaken public protests and acts of civil disobedience which have included occupations of nuclear plant sites. Some of the mo ...
oppose nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and/or uranium mining. More than eighty anti-nuclear groups operate, or have operated, in the United States. These include: *
Abalone Alliance The Abalone Alliance (1977–1985) was a nonviolent civil disobedience group formed to shut down the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo on the central California coast in the United States. They model ...
*
Arms Control Association The Arms Control Association is a United States-based nonpartisan membership organization founded in 1971, with the self-stated mission of "promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies." The group publishes th ...
* Bailly Alliance *
Beyond Nuclear Beyond may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Beyond'' (1921 film), an American silent film * ''Beyond'' (2000 film), a Danish film directed by Åke Sandgren, OT: ''Dykkerne'' * ''Beyond'' (2010 film), a Swedish film directed b ...
*
Clamshell Alliance The Clamshell Alliance is an anti-nuclear organization founded in 1976 to oppose the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. The alliance has been dormant for many years. The group was co-founded by Paul Gunter, ...
*
Committee for Nuclear Responsibility The Committee for Nuclear Responsibility was formed as a "political and educational organization to disseminate anti-nuclear views and information to the public". The goals of the organization were a moratorium on nuclear power and the commercializa ...
*
Corporate Accountability International Corporate accountability is the acknowledgement and assumption of responsibility for the consequences of a company's actions. It can be defined in narrowly financial terms, e.g. for a business to meet certain standards or address the regulatory re ...
*
Council for a Livable World Council for a Livable World is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to eliminating the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons. Its stated aim is for "progressive national security policies and helping elect congressional c ...
*
Critical Mass In nuclear engineering, a critical mass is the smallest amount of fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction. The critical mass of a fissionable material depends upon its nuclear properties (specifically, its nuclear fissi ...
*
Friends of the Earth Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) is an international network of environmental organizations in 73 countries. The organization was founded in 1969 in San Francisco by David Brower, Donald Aitken and Gary Soucie after Brower's split with ...
*
Greenpeace USA Greenpeace USA is the United States affiliate of Greenpeace, Greenpeace International, an environmental nonprofit organization that spawned a social movement inspired by direct actions on the high seas to stop whaling and nuclear testing. Headqua ...
* Mothers for Peace *
Musicians United for Safe Energy Musicians United for Safe Energy, or MUSE, is an activist group 1979 in music, founded in 1979 by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, Harvey Wasserman and John Hall (New York), John Hall. The group advocates anti-nuclear, against the use ...
* NAU Against Uranium *
Nevada Desert Experience Nevada Desert Experience is a name for the movement to stop U.S. nuclear weapons testing that came into use in the middle 1980s. It is also the name of an anti-nuclear organization which continues to create public events to question the morality ...
*
No Nukes group Musicians United for Safe Energy, or MUSE, is an activist group founded in 1979 by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, Harvey Wasserman and John Hall. The group advocates against the use of nuclear energy, forming shortly after the ...
*
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF) is a non-profit, non-partisan international education and advocacy organization. Founded in 1982, NAPF is composed of individuals and organizations from all over the world. It has consultative status to the ...
* Nuclear Control Institute *
Nuclear Information and Resource Service The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit anti-nuclear group founded in 1978 to be the information and networking center for citizens and organizations concerned about nuclear power, radioactive waste, radiati ...
*
Peace Action Peace Action is a peace organization whose focus is on preventing the deployment of nuclear weapons in space, thwarting weapons sales to countries with human rights violations, and promoting a new United States foreign policy based on common sec ...
*
Physicians for Social Responsibility Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) is a physician-led organization in the US working to protect the public from the threats of nuclear proliferation, climate change, and environmental toxins. It produces and disseminates publications, p ...
* Plowshares Movement *
Public Citizen Public Citizen is a non-profit, progressive consumer rights advocacy group and think tank based in Washington, D.C., United States, with a branch in Austin, Texas. Lobbying efforts Public Citizen advocates before all three branches of the Unit ...
*
The Seneca Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice The Seneca Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice was a women-only peace camp formed to protest the scheduled deployment of Cruise and Pershing II missiles before their suspected shipment from the Seneca Army Depot to Europe in the f ...
*
Shad Alliance The Shad Alliance was an active and influential anti-nuclear group which used non-violent, direct action methods in the late 1970s and 1980s. It grew out of the "alliance movement" started in New Hampshire by the Clamshell Alliance. The Shad Allian ...
*
Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who be ...
* Three Mile Island Alert *
Women Strike for Peace Women Strike for Peace (WSP, also known as Women for Peace) was a women's peace activist group in the United States. In 1961, nearing the height of the Cold War, around 50,000 women marched in 60 cities around the United States to demonstrate aga ...
Some of the most influential groups in the anti-nuclear movement have had some members who were elite scientists, including Nobel Laureates
Linus Pauling Linus Carl Pauling (; February 28, 1901August 19, 1994) was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific top ...
and
Hermann Joseph Muller Hermann Joseph Muller (December 21, 1890 – April 5, 1967) was an American geneticist, educator, and Nobel laureate best known for his work on the physiological and genetic effects of radiation (mutagenesis), as well as his outspoken political ...
. In the United States, these scientists have belonged primarily to three groups: the
Union of Concerned Scientists The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a nonprofit science advocacy organization based in the United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. Anne Kapuscinski, Professor of Environmenta ...
, the
Federation of American Scientists The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is an American nonprofit global policy think tank with the stated intent of using science and scientific analysis to attempt to make the world more secure. FAS was founded in 1946 by scientists who wo ...
, and the
Committee for Nuclear Responsibility The Committee for Nuclear Responsibility was formed as a "political and educational organization to disseminate anti-nuclear views and information to the public". The goals of the organization were a moratorium on nuclear power and the commercializa ...
. Many American religious organizations have a long record of opposing
nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
. Rejecting the development and use of nuclear weapons is "one of the most widely shared convictions across faith traditions". In the 1980s religious groups organized large anti-nuclear protests involving hundreds of thousands of people, and specific groups involved included the
Southern Baptist Convention The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination, and the largest Protestant and second-largest Christian denomination in the United States. The wor ...
, and the Episcopal Church. The Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish communities published explicitly
anti-nuclear The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, natio ...
statements, and in 2000 Muslims also began to take a stance against nuclear weaponry.Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
Let’s Take Religious Nuclear Opposition to the Next Level
''Center for American Progress'', April 12, 2010.
The platform adopted by the delegates of the
Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundation ...
at their annual Green Congress May 26–28, 2000, reflecting the majority views of the membership, included the creation of self-reproducing,
renewable energy Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, the movement of water, and geothermal heat. Although most renewable energy ...
systems and use of federal investments, purchasing, mandates, and incentives to shut down nuclear power plants and phase out
fossil fuels A fossil fuel is a hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the remains of dead plants and animals that is extracted and burned as a fuel. The main fossil fuels are coal, oil, and natural gas. Fossil fuels ...
. Recent campaigning by anti-nuclear groups has related to several nuclear power plants including the
Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant The Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station is a nuclear power plant on the shore of Lake Erie near Monroe, in Frenchtown Charter Township, Michigan on approximately . All units of the plant are operated by the DTE Energy Electric Company and ow ...
,
Indian Point Energy Center Indian Point Energy Center (I.P.E.C.) is a three-unit nuclear power plant station located in Buchanan, just south of Peekskill, in Westchester County, New York. It sits on the east bank of the Hudson River, about north of Midtown Manhattan. ...
,
Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Station was a single unit 636 MWe boiling water reactor power plant in the United States. The plant is located on an site adjacent to Oyster Creek in the Forked River section of Lacey Township in Ocean County, New ...
,
Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station (PNPS) is a decommissioned nuclear power plant in Massachusetts in the Manomet section of Plymouth on Cape Cod Bay, south of the tip of Rocky Point and north of Priscilla Beach. Like many similar plants, it was co ...
,
Salem Nuclear Power Plant The Salem Nuclear Power Plant is a two unit pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant located in Lower Alloways Creek Township, in Salem County, New Jersey, in the United States. It is owned by PSEG Nuclear LLC and Constellation Energy. ...
, and
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant Vermont Yankee was an electricity generating nuclear power plant, located in the town of Vernon, Vermont, in the northeastern United States. It generated 620 megawatts (MWe) of electricity at full power. The plant was a boiling water reacto ...
. There have also been campaigns relating to the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant, the
Idaho National Laboratory Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is one of the national laboratories of the United States Department of Energy and is managed by the Battelle Energy Alliance. While the laboratory does other research, historically it has been involved with nu ...
, proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, the
Hanford Site The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. The site has been known by many names, including SiteW a ...
, the
Nevada Test Site The Nevada National Security Site (N2S2 or NNSS), known as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of th ...
,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...
, and transportation of nuclear waste from the
Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...
.


Anti-nuclear protests

On November 1, 1961, at the height of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, about 50,000 women brought together by
Women Strike for Peace Women Strike for Peace (WSP, also known as Women for Peace) was a women's peace activist group in the United States. In 1961, nearing the height of the Cold War, around 50,000 women marched in 60 cities around the United States to demonstrate aga ...
marched in 60 cities in the United States to demonstrate against
nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
. It was the largest national women's peace protest of the 20th century. There were many anti-nuclear protests in the United States which captured national public attention during the 1970s and 1980s. These included the well-known
Clamshell Alliance The Clamshell Alliance is an anti-nuclear organization founded in 1976 to oppose the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. The alliance has been dormant for many years. The group was co-founded by Paul Gunter, ...
protests at
Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant The Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant, more commonly known as Seabrook Station, is a nuclear power plant located in Seabrook, New Hampshire, United States, approximately north of Boston and south of Portsmouth. It has operated since 1990. With its ...
and the
Abalone Alliance The Abalone Alliance (1977–1985) was a nonviolent civil disobedience group formed to shut down the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo on the central California coast in the United States. They model ...
protests at
Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant The Diablo Canyon Power Plant is a nuclear power plant near Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, California. Since the permanent shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in 2013, Diablo Canyon has been the only operational nucl ...
, where thousands of protesters were arrested. Other large protests followed the 1979
Three Mile Island accident The Three Mile Island accident was a partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island, Unit 2 (TMI-2) reactor in Pennsylvania, United States. It began at 4 a.m. on March 28, 1979. It is the most significant accident in U.S. commercial nuclea ...
. A large
anti-nuclear The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, natio ...
demonstration was held in May 1979 in Washington, D.C., when 65,000 people including the Governor of California, attended a march and rally against
nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced b ...
.Giugni, Marco (2004).
Social Protest and Policy Change: Ecology, Antinuclear, and Peace Movements
' p. 45.
In New York City on September 23, 1979, almost 200,000 people attended a protest against nuclear power. Anti-nuclear power protests preceded the shutdown of the Shoreham,
Yankee Rowe Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station (Nuclear decommissioning, decommissioned) was a nuclear power plant in Rowe, Massachusetts, that operated from 1960 to 1992. The 185-megawatt electric pressurized water reactor, pressurized-water plant, located on ...
, Millstone I,
Rancho Seco The Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station is a decommissioned nuclear power plant built by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) in Herald, California. History In 1966, SMUD purchased in southeast Sacramento County for a nuclear po ...
,
Maine Yankee Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant was a nuclear power plant built at an 820-acre site on Bailey Peninsula of Wiscasset, Maine, in the United States. It operated from 1972 until 1996, when problems at the plant became too expensive to fix. It was ...
, and about a dozen other nuclear power plants.Williams, Estha
Nuke Fight Nears Decisive Moment
''Valley Advocate'', August 28, 2008.
On June 3, 1981,
Thomas Thomas may refer to: People * List of people with given name Thomas * Thomas (name) * Thomas (surname) * Saint Thomas (disambiguation) * Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church * Thomas the A ...
launched the
White House Peace Vigil The White House Peace Vigil is an anti-nuclear weapons peace vigil started by William Thomas in 1981. Thomas believed it to be the longest running uninterrupted anti-war protest in U.S. history. After Thomas's death in 2009, it was maintained ...
in
Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
He was later joined on the
vigil A vigil, from the Latin ''vigilia'' meaning ''wakefulness'' (Greek: ''pannychis'', or ''agrypnia'' ), is a period of purposeful sleeplessness, an occasion for devotional watching, or an observance. The Italian word ''vigilia'' has become genera ...
by anti-nuclear activists Concepcion Picciotto and Ellen Benjamin. On June 6, 1982, a crowd of 85,000 gathers at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA for "Peace Sunday: We Have a Dream" a rally and concert in support of the United Nations Special Session on Nuclear Disarmament. Performers include Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder and Crosby, Stills & Nash. On June 12, 1982, one million people demonstrated in New York City's
Central Park Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West Side, Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the List of New York City parks, fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban par ...
against
nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
and for an end to the
cold war The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
arms race An arms race occurs when two or more groups compete in military superiority. It consists of a competition between two or more states to have superior armed forces; a competition concerning production of weapons, the growth of a military, and t ...
. It was the largest anti-nuclear
protest A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration or remonstrance) is a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards an idea or action, typically a political one. Protests can be thought of as acts of coopera ...
and the largest political demonstration in American history. International Day of Nuclear Disarmament protests were held on June 20, 1983, at 50 sites across the United States.Harvey Klehr
Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today
Transaction Publishers, 1988, p. 150.
1,400 Anti-nuclear protesters arrested
''Miami Herald'', June 21, 1983.
In 1986, hundreds of people walked from
Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
to
Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...
in the
Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, Inc. (also referred to as The Great Peace March, GPM, and the March) was a cross-country event in 1986 aimed at raising awareness to the growing danger of nuclear proliferation and to advocate fo ...
.Hundreds of Marchers Hit Washington in Finale of Nationwaide Peace March
''Gainesville Sun'', November 16, 1986.
There were many
Nevada Desert Experience Nevada Desert Experience is a name for the movement to stop U.S. nuclear weapons testing that came into use in the middle 1980s. It is also the name of an anti-nuclear organization which continues to create public events to question the morality ...
protests and peace camps at the
Nevada Test Site The Nevada National Security Site (N2S2 or NNSS), known as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of th ...
during the 1980s and 1990s. In the 1980s, when fewer nuclear power plants remained in the construction and licensing pipeline, and interest in energy policy as a national issue declined, many anti-nuclear activists switched their focus to nuclear weapons and the arms race. There has also been an ''institutionalization'' of the anti-nuclear movement, where the anti-nuclear movement carried its contests into less visible, and more specialized institutional areas, such as regulatory and licensing hearings, and legal challenges. At the state level, anti-nuclear groups were also successful in placing several anti-nuclear referendums on the ballot. On May 1, 2005, 40,000 anti-nuclear/anti-war protesters marched past the United Nations in New York, 60 years after the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the onl ...
.Lance Murdoch
Pictures: New York MayDay anti-nuke/war march
'' IndyMedia'', 2 may 2005.

Fox News, May 2, 2005.
This was the largest anti-nuclear rally in the U.S. for several decades. In 2008, 2009, and 2010, there have been protests about, and campaigns against, several new nuclear reactor proposals in the United States.
''Indymedia UK'', August 8, 2008.
There is an annual protest against U.S. nuclear weapons research at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States. The lab was originally established as the University of California Radiation Laboratory, Livermore Branch in 1952 in response ...
in California and in the 2007 protest, 64 people were arrested. There have been a series of protests at the
Nevada Test Site The Nevada National Security Site (N2S2 or NNSS), known as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of th ...
and in the April 2007
Nevada Desert Experience Nevada Desert Experience is a name for the movement to stop U.S. nuclear weapons testing that came into use in the middle 1980s. It is also the name of an anti-nuclear organization which continues to create public events to question the morality ...
protest, 39 people were cited by police. There have been anti-nuclear protests at
Naval Base Kitsap Naval Base Kitsap is a U.S. Navy base located on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington state, created in 2004 by merging the former Naval Station Bremerton with Naval Submarine Base Bangor. It is the home base for the Navy’s fleet throughout ...
for many years, and several in 2008. Also in 2008 and 2009, there have been protests about several proposed nuclear reactors.Protest against nuclear reactor
''Chicago Tribune'', October 16, 2008.


People with anti-nuclear views


Al Gore

Former vice president
Al Gore Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic Part ...
says he is not anti-nuclear, but has stated that the "cost of the present generation of reactors is nearly prohibitive." In his 2009 book, ''Our Choice'', Gore argues that nuclear power was once "expected to provide virtually unlimited supplies of low-cost electricity", but the reality is that it has been "an energy source in crisis for the last 30 years." Worldwide growth in nuclear power has slowed in recent years, with no new reactors and an "actual decline in global capacity and output in 2008." In the United States, "no nuclear power plants ordered after 1972 have been built to completion."Al Gore (2009). ''Our Choice'', Bloomsbury, p. 152.
Of the 253 nuclear power reactors originally ordered in the United States from 1953 to 2008, 48 percent were canceled, 11 percent were prematurely shut down, 14 percent experienced at least a one-year-or-more outage, and 27 percent are operating without having a year-plus outage. Thus, only about one fourth of those ordered, or about half of those completed, are still operating and have proved relatively reliable.


Amory Lovins

In his 2005 book ''Winning the Oil Endgame'',
Amory Lovins Amory Bloch Lovins (born November 13, 1947) is an American writer, physicist, and former chairman/chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has written on energy policy and related areas for four decades, and served on the US Nationa ...
praises nuclear power engineers, but is critical of the nuclear industry:
No vendor has made money selling power reactors. This is the greatest failure of any enterprise in the industrial history of the world. We don't mean that as a criticism of nuclear power's practitioners, on whose skill and devotion we all continue to depend; the impressive operational improvements in U.S. power reactors in recent years deserve great credit. It is simply how technologies and markets evolved, despite the best intentions and immense effort. In nuclear power's heydey, its proponents saw no competitors but central coal-fired power stations. Then, in quick succession, came end-use efficiency, combined-cycle plants, distributed generation (including versions that recovered valuable heat previously wasted), and competitive windpower. The range of competitors will only continue to expand more and their costs to fall faster than any nuclear technology can match.
In 1988, Lovins argued that improving energy efficiency can simultaneously ameliorate
greenhouse warming The greenhouse effect is a process that occurs when energy from a planet's host star goes through the planet's atmosphere and heats the planet's surface, but greenhouse gases in the atmosphere prevent some of the heat from returning directly ...
, reduce
acid rain Acid rain is rain or any other form of precipitation that is unusually acidic, meaning that it has elevated levels of hydrogen ions (low pH). Most water, including drinking water, has a neutral pH that exists between 6.5 and 8.5, but acid ...
and
air pollution Air pollution is the contamination of air due to the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are harmful to the health of humans and other living beings, or cause damage to the climate or to materials. There are many different types ...
, save money, and avoid the problems of nuclear power. Given the urgency of abating global warming, Lovins stated that we cannot afford to invest in nuclear power when those same dollars put into efficiency would displace far more
carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide (chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is transpar ...
. In "Nuclear Power: Climate Fix or Folly," published in 2010, Lovins argued that expanded nuclear power "does not represent a cost-effective solution to global warming and that investors would shun it were it not for generous government subsidies lubricated by intensive lobbying efforts."


Joseph Romm

Joseph Romm contends that nuclear power generates about 20 percent of all U.S. electricity, and is a low-carbon source of around-the-clock power, which has received renewed interest in recent years.Romm, Joe (2008)
The Self-Limiting Future of Nuclear Power
p. 1.
Yet, Romm says, nuclear power's "own myriad limitations will constrain its growth, especially in the near term", and the limitations include: *"Prohibitively high, and escalating, capital costs *Production bottlenecks in key components needed to build plants *Very long construction times *Concerns about uranium supplies and importation issues *Unresolved problems with availability and security of radioactive waste storage, which has a 100,000 year shelf life *Large-scale water use and contamination amid shortages *High electricity prices from new plants".


Randall Forsberg

Randall Forsberg (née Watson, 1943–2007) became interested in
arms control Arms control is a term for international restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation and usage of small arms, conventional weapons, and weapons of mass destruction. Arms control is typically exercised through the u ...
issues while working at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1974, she returned to the United States, and became a graduate student in international studies at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
. In 1979, Forsberg wrote ''Call to Halt the Arms Race'', which later was the manifesto of the
Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign Peace Action is a peace organization whose focus is on preventing the deployment of nuclear weapons in space, thwarting weapons sales to countries with human rights violations, and promoting a new United States foreign policy based on common secu ...
. The document advocated a bilateral halt to the testing, production, deployment and delivery of
nuclear weapons A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions (thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...
. Forsberg was awarded a doctorate in 1980 and she started the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, which became an important resource for the
peace movement A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals, such as the ending of a particular war (or wars) or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peac ...
and
anti-nuclear The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, natio ...
weapons movement. In 1983 Forsberg was awarded a
MacArthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and p ...
''
genius grant The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 ind ...
''. In 2005 she became Spitzer Professorship in Political Science at the
City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...
, and died of cancer in 2007 when she was 64 years old.


Christopher Flavin

Many advocates of nuclear power argue that, given the urgency of doing something about climate change quickly, it must be pursued. Christopher Flavin, however, contends that speedy implementation is not one of nuclear power's strong points:Worldwatch Institute (2008)
Building a Low-Carbon Economy
in ''State of the World 2008'', p. 81.
Planning, licensing, and constructing even a single nuclear plant typically takes a decade or more, and plants frequently fail to meet completion deadlines. Due to the dearth of orders in recent decades, the world currently has very limited capacity to manufacture many of the critical components of nuclear plants. Rebuilding that capacity will take a decade or more.
Given the urgency of the climate problem, Flavin emphasizes the rapid commercialization of renewable energy and
efficient energy use Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the process of reducing the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, insulating a building allows it to use less heating and cooling energy to ...
:
Improved energy productivity and renewable energy are both available in abundance—and new policies and technologies are rapidly making them more economically competitive with fossil fuels. In combination, these energy options represent the most robust alternative to the current energy system, capable of providing the diverse array of energy services that a modern economy requires. Given the urgency of the climate problem, that is indeed convenient.


Other people

Selected other notable individuals who have expressed reservations about nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and/or uranium mining in the US include: * Larry Bogart *
Helen Caldicott Helen Mary Caldicott (born 7 August 1938) is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate. She founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear we ...
*
Barry Commoner Barry Commoner (May 28, 1917 – September 30, 2012) was an American cellular biologist, college professor, and politician. He was a leading ecologist and among the founders of the modern environmental movement. He was the director of the ...
*
Frances Crowe Frances Crowe (née Hyde; March 15, 1919 – August 27, 2019) was an American peace activist and pacifist from the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. Early life Frances Hyde was born in Carthage, Missouri on March 15, 1919. Growing up, she ...
* Carrie Barefoot Dickerson * Paul M. Doty *
Jane Fonda Jane Seymour Fonda (born December 21, 1937) is an American actress, activist, and former fashion model. Recognized as a film icon, Fonda is the recipient of various accolades including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, sev ...
* Randall Forsberg *
Paul Gunter Paul Gunter is a co-founder of the Clamshell Alliance anti-nuclear group, who was arrested at Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant for non-violent civil disobedience on several occasions. An energy policy analyst and activist, he has been a voca ...
*
John Hall John Hall may refer to: Academics * John Hall (NYU President) (fl. c. 1890), American academic * John A. Hall (born 1949), sociology professor at McGill University, Montreal * John F. Hall (born 1951), professor of classics at Brigham Young Unive ...
* Jackie Hudson * Sam Lovejoy *
Amory Lovins Amory Bloch Lovins (born November 13, 1947) is an American writer, physicist, and former chairman/chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has written on energy policy and related areas for four decades, and served on the US Nationa ...
* Arjun Makhijani * Gregory Minor *
Hermann Joseph Muller Hermann Joseph Muller (December 21, 1890 – April 5, 1967) was an American geneticist, educator, and Nobel laureate best known for his work on the physiological and genetic effects of radiation (mutagenesis), as well as his outspoken political ...
*
Ralph Nader Ralph Nader (; born February 27, 1934) is an American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. The son of Lebanese immigrants to the Un ...
*
Linus Pauling Linus Carl Pauling (; February 28, 1901August 19, 1994) was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific top ...
*
Eugene Rabinowitch Eugene Rabinowitch (1901–1973) was a Russian-born American biophysicist who is known for his work in photosynthesis and nuclear energy. He was a co-author of the Franck Report and a co-founder in 1945 of the '' Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ...
*
Bonnie Raitt Bonnie Lynn Raitt (; born November 8, 1949) is an American blues singer and guitarist. In 1971, Raitt released her self-titled debut album. Following this, she released a series of critically acclaimed roots-influenced albums that incorporated ...
*
Martin Sheen Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez (born August 3, 1940), known professionally as Martin Sheen, is an American actor. He first became known for his roles in the films ''The Subject Was Roses'' (1968) and ''Badlands'' (1973), and later achieved wid ...
*
Karen Silkwood Karen Gay Silkwood (February 19, 1946 – November 13, 1974) was an American chemical technician and labor union activist known for raising concerns about corporate practices related to health and safety in a nuclear facility. She w ...
*
Thomas Thomas may refer to: People * List of people with given name Thomas * Thomas (name) * Thomas (surname) * Saint Thomas (disambiguation) * Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church * Thomas the A ...
*
Louie Vitale Louis Vitale, OFM, is a Franciscan friar, peace activist, and a co-founder of Nevada Desert Experience. His religious beliefs led him to participate in civil disobedience actions at peace demonstrations and acts of religious witness over forty ...
*
Harvey Wasserman Harvey Franklin Wasserman (born December 31, 1945) is an American journalist, author, democracy activist, and advocate for renewable energy. He has been a strategist and organizer in the anti-nuclear movement in the United States for over 30 years ...


Criticism

In November 2009, ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' reported that nuclear power is emerging as "perhaps the world's most unlikely weapon against
climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
, with the backing of even some green activists who once campaigned against it." The article said that rather than deride the potential for nuclear power, some environmentalists are embracing it, and that presently there is only "muted opposition"—nothing like the protests and plant invasions that helped define the anti-nuclear movement in the United States during the 1970s. Patrick Moore, one of the initial founders of
Greenpeace Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning network, founded in Canada in 1971 by Irving Stowe and Dorothy Stowe, immigrant environmental activists from the United States. Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth t ...
, said in a 2008 interview that, "It wasn't until after I'd left Greenpeace and the climate change issue started coming to the forefront that I started rethinking energy policy in general and realized that I had been incorrect in my analysis of nuclear as being some kind of evil plot." Bernard Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh, calculates that nuclear power is many times safer than any other form of power generation. Critics of the movement point to independent studies showing the capital costs of renewable energy sources are higher than those from nuclear power. Critics argue that the amount of waste generated by nuclear power is very small, as all the high-level nuclear waste from 50+ years of operation of the world's nuclear reactors would fit into a single football field to the depth of five feet. Furthermore, U.S. coal power plants presently create nearly a million tons of low-level radioactive waste per day and therefore release more total radioactivity than the nation's nuclear plants, due to the uranium and thorium found naturally within the coal. Nuclear proponents also point out that cost and the quantity of waste figures for the operation of nuclear power plants are commonly derived from nuclear reactors built using second generation designs, dating from the 1960s. Advanced reactor designs are estimated to be even cheaper to operate and generate less than 1% the amount of waste of current designs, like
Integral Fast Reactor The integral fast reactor (IFR, originally Liquid metal cooled reactor, advanced liquid-metal reactor) is a design for a nuclear reactor using fast neutrons and no neutron moderator (a Fast-neutron reactor, "fast" reactor). IFR would breed more f ...
s or
Pebble Bed Reactor The pebble-bed reactor (PBR) is a design for a graphite-moderated, gas-cooled nuclear reactor. It is a type of very-high-temperature reactor (VHTR), one of the six classes of nuclear reactors in the Generation IV initiative. The basic desi ...
s. It is because of these facts that proponents argue that nuclear fission power is the safest means currently available to entirely replace the use of fossil fuels, and pro-nuclear environmentalists argue that a combination of both nuclear energy and renewable energy would be the fastest, safest, and cheapest way forward. In 2007
Gwyneth Cravens Gwyneth Cravens is an American novelist and journalist. She has published five novels. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in ''The New Yorker'', where she also worked as a fiction editor, and in '' Harper's Magazine'', where she was an associ ...
outlined the message of her newest book, ''Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy''. It argues for
nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced b ...
as a safe
energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat a ...
source and an essential preventive of
global warming In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
. ''
Pandora's Promise ''Pandora's Promise'' is a 2013 documentary film about the nuclear power debate, directed by Robert Stone. Its central argument is that nuclear power, which still faces historical opposition from environmentalists, is a relatively safe and clean ...
'' is a 2013
documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
, directed by Robert Stone. It presents an argument that nuclear energy, typically feared by environmentalists, is in fact the only feasible way of meeting humanity's growing need for energy while also addressing the serious problem of
climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
. The movie features several notable individuals (some of whom were once vehemently opposed to nuclear power, but who now speak in support of it), including:
Stewart Brand Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American writer, best known as editor of the ''Whole Earth Catalog''. He founded a number of organizations, including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the auth ...
,
Gwyneth Cravens Gwyneth Cravens is an American novelist and journalist. She has published five novels. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in ''The New Yorker'', where she also worked as a fiction editor, and in '' Harper's Magazine'', where she was an associ ...
,
Mark Lynas Mark Lynas (born 1973) is a British author and journalist whose work is focused on environmentalism and climate change. He is a contributor to ''New Statesman'', ''The Ecologist'', ''Granta ''and ''Geographical ''magazines, and ''The Guardian'' ...
,
Richard Rhodes Richard Lee Rhodes (born July 4, 1937) is an American historian, journalist, and author of both fiction and non-fiction, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning ''The Making of the Atomic Bomb'' (1986), and most recently, ''Energy: A Human Histor ...
and
Michael Shellenberger Michael D. Shellenberger (born June 16, 1971) is an American author and former public relations professional whose writing has focused on the intersection of politics, the environment, climate change and nuclear power, as well as more recently on ...
.
Anti-nuclear The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, natio ...
advocate
Helen Caldicott Helen Mary Caldicott (born 7 August 1938) is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate. She founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear we ...
appears briefly. As of 2014, the U.S. nuclear industry has begun a new lobbying effort, hiring three former senators—
Evan Bayh Birch Evans Bayh III ( ; born December 26, 1955) is an American lawyer, lobbyist, and Democratic Party politician who served as a United States senator from Indiana from 1999 to 2011 and the 46th governor of Indiana from 1989 to 1997. Bayh ...
, a Democrat;
Judd Gregg Judd Alan Gregg (born February 14, 1947) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 76th governor of New Hampshire from 1989 to 1993 and was a United States senator from New Hampshire; in the Senate, Gregg served as chairman of the ...
, a Republican; and
Spencer Abraham Edward Spencer Abraham (born June 12, 1952) is an American attorney, author, and politician who served as the tenth United States Secretary of Energy from 2001 to 2005, under President George W. Bush. A member of the Republican Party, Abraham pr ...
, a Republican—as well as
William M. Daley William Michael Daley (born August 8, 1948) is an American lawyer, politician and former banker. He served as White House Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama, from January 2011 to January 2012. He also served as U.S. Secretary of Commer ...
, a former staffer to President Obama. The initiative is called Nuclear Matters, and it has begun a newspaper advertising campaign.


Recent developments

As of early 2010, anti-nuclear groups such as Physicians for Social Responsibility, NukeFree.org, and NIRS were actively fighting federal loan guarantees for new nuclear plant construction. In February 2010, several groups coordinated a national call-in day to Congress to attempt to stop $54 billion in federal loan guarantees for new nuclear plants. However, the first such loan guarantee of $8.3 billion was offered to Southern Company that same month. In January 2010, about 175 anti-nuclear activists participated in a 126-mile walk in an effort to block the re-licensing of
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant Vermont Yankee was an electricity generating nuclear power plant, located in the town of Vernon, Vermont, in the northeastern United States. It generated 620 megawatts (MWe) of electricity at full power. The plant was a boiling water reacto ...
. In February 2010, numerous anti-nuclear activists and private citizens gathered in Montpelier, to be at hand as the
Vermont Senate The Vermont Senate is the upper house of the Vermont General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Vermont. The senate consists of 30 members. Senate districting divides the 30 members into three single-member districts, six two-m ...
voted 26 to 4 against the "Public Good" certificate needed for continued operation of Vermont Yankee past 2012. In April 2010 a dozen environmental groups (including
Friends of the Earth Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) is an international network of environmental organizations in 73 countries. The organization was founded in 1969 in San Francisco by David Brower, Donald Aitken and Gary Soucie after Brower's split with ...
, South Carolina's
Sierra Club The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who be ...
, Nuclear Watch South, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Georgia Women's Action for New Directions) stated that the proposed
AP1000 The AP1000 is a nuclear power plant designed and sold by Westinghouse Electric Company. The plant is a pressurized water reactor with improved use of passive nuclear safety and many design features intended to lower its capital cost and improve ...
reactor containment design is "inherently less safe than current reactors."
Arnold Gundersen Arnold "Arnie" Gundersen (born January 4, 1949 in Elizabeth, New Jersey) is a former nuclear industry executive, and engineer with more than 44 years of nuclear industry experience who became a whistleblower in 1990. Gundersen has written dozens of ...
, a nuclear engineer, authored a 32-page report arguing that the new AP1000 reactors will be vulnerable to leaks caused by corrosion holes. There are plans to construct the Westinghouse AP1000 reactors at seven sites across the southeast, including Plant Vogtle in Burke County, Georgia.Rob Pavey
Groups say new Vogtle reactors need study
''Augusta Chronicle'', April 21, 2010.
In October 2010, Michael Mariotte, executive director of the
Nuclear Information and Resource Service The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit anti-nuclear group founded in 1978 to be the information and networking center for citizens and organizations concerned about nuclear power, radioactive waste, radiati ...
anti-nuclear group, predicted that the U.S. nuclear industry will not experience a
nuclear renaissance Since about 2001 the term nuclear renaissance has been used to refer to a possible nuclear power industry revival, driven by rising fossil fuel prices and new concerns about meeting greenhouse gas emission limits. In the 2009 ''World Energy ...
, for the most simple of reasons: "nuclear reactors make no economic sense". The economic slump has driven down electricity demand and the price of competing energy sources, and Congress has failed to pass climate change legislation, making nuclear economics very difficult. When
Peter Shumlin Peter Elliott Shumlin (born March 24, 1956) is an American politician from Vermont. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 81st governor of Vermont from 2011 to 2017. He was first elected to the office in 2010, and was reelected to ...
was Governor of Vermont, he was a prominent opponent of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant and two days after Shumlin was elected in November 2010,
Entergy Entergy Corporation is a Fortune 500 integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations in the Deep South of the United States. Entergy is headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana, and ge ...
put the plant up for sale.


Post-Fukushima

Following the 2011 Japanese nuclear accidents, activists who were involved in the movement's emergence (such as
Graham Nash Graham William Nash (born 2 February 1942) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, photographer, and activist. He is known for his light tenor voice and for his contributions as a member of the Hollies and the supergroups Crosby, Stills ...
and
Paul Gunter Paul Gunter is a co-founder of the Clamshell Alliance anti-nuclear group, who was arrested at Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant for non-violent civil disobedience on several occasions. An energy policy analyst and activist, he has been a voca ...
), suggest that Japan's nuclear crisis may rekindle an anti-nuclear protest movement in the United States. The aim, they say, is "not just to block the Obama administration's push for new nuclear construction, but to convince Americans that existing plants pose dangers." In March 2011, 600 people gathered for a weekend protest outside the Vermont Yankee plant. The demonstration was held to show support for the thousands of Japanese people who are endangered by possible radiation from the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster The was a nuclear accident in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan. The proximate cause of the disaster was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which occurred on the afternoon of 11 March 2011 and ...
. In April 2011, Rochelle Becker, executive director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility said that the United States should review its nuclear accident liability limits, in the light of the economic impacts of the Fukushima disaster. The New England region has a long history of anti-nuclear activism and 75 people held a State House rally on April 6, 2011, to "protest the region's aging nuclear plants and the increasing stockpile of radioactive spent fuel rods at them." The protest was held shortly before a State House hearing where legislators were scheduled to hear representatives of the region's three nuclear plants – Pilgrim in Plymouth, Vermont Yankee in Vernon, and Seabrook in New Hampshire—talk about the safety of their reactors in the light of the Japanese nuclear crisis. Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim have reactor designs similar to the crippled Japanese nuclear plants. As of April 2011, a total of 45 groups and individuals from across the nation are formally asking the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to immediately suspend all licensing and other activities at 21 proposed nuclear reactor projects in 15 states until the NRC completes a thorough post- Fukushima reactor crisis examination. The petitioners also are asking the NRC to supplement its own investigation by establishing an independent commission comparable to that set up in the wake of the serious, though less severe, 1979 Three Mile Island accident. The petitioners include
Public Citizen Public Citizen is a non-profit, progressive consumer rights advocacy group and think tank based in Washington, D.C., United States, with a branch in Austin, Texas. Lobbying efforts Public Citizen advocates before all three branches of the Unit ...
,
Southern Alliance for Clean Energy The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) is a nonprofit advocacy group that promotes the use of clean energy in the southeastern United States. History SACE was founded in 1985 under the original name Tennessee Valley Energy Coalition (T ...
, and San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace. Thirty two years after the No Nukes concert in New York, on August 7, 2011, a
Musicians United for Safe Energy Musicians United for Safe Energy, or MUSE, is an activist group 1979 in music, founded in 1979 by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, Harvey Wasserman and John Hall (New York), John Hall. The group advocates anti-nuclear, against the use ...
benefit concert was held Mountain View, California, to raise money for MUSE and for Japanese tsunami/nuclear disaster relief. The show was powered off-grid and artists included Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, John Hall, Graham Nash, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Kitaro, Jason Mraz, Sweet Honey and the Rock, the Doobie Brothers, Tom Morello, and Jonathan Wilson. In February 2012, the United States
Nuclear Regulatory Commission The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is an independent agency of the United States government tasked with protecting public health and safety related to nuclear energy. Established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, the NRC began operat ...
approved the construction of two additional reactors at the
Vogtle Electric Generating Plant The Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, also known as Plant Vogtle (), is a two-unit nuclear power plant located in Burke County, near Waynesboro, Georgia, in the southeastern United States. It is named after a former Alabama Power and ...
, the first reactors to be approved in over 30 years since the Three Mile Island accident, but NRC Chairman
Gregory Jaczko Gregory B. Jaczko (; born October 29, 1970, Norristown, Pennsylvania) is a physicist who was chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from 2005 to 2012.
cast a dissenting vote citing safety concerns stemming from Japan's 2011
Fukushima nuclear disaster The was a nuclear accident in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan. The proximate cause of the disaster was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which occurred on the afternoon of 11 March 2011 and ...
, and saying "I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima never happened". One week after Southern received the license to begin major construction on the two new reactors, a dozen environmental and
anti-nuclear The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, natio ...
groups are suing to stop the Plant Vogtle expansion project, saying "public safety and environmental problems since Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor accident have not been taken into account". The nuclear reactors to be built at Vogtle are new
AP1000 The AP1000 is a nuclear power plant designed and sold by Westinghouse Electric Company. The plant is a pressurized water reactor with improved use of passive nuclear safety and many design features intended to lower its capital cost and improve ...
third generation reactors, which are said to have safety improvements over older power reactors. However, John Ma, a senior structural engineer at the NRC, is concerned that some parts of the AP1000 steel skin are so brittle that the "impact energy" from a plane strike or storm driven projectile could shatter the wall. Edwin Lyman, a senior staff scientist at the
Union of Concerned Scientists The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a nonprofit science advocacy organization based in the United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. Anne Kapuscinski, Professor of Environmenta ...
, is concerned about the strength of the steel containment vessel and the concrete shield building around the AP1000. Arnold Gundersen, a nuclear engineer commissioned by several anti-nuclear groups, released a report which explored a hazard associated with the possible rusting through of the steel liner of the containment structure.Matthew L. Wald
Critics Challenge Safety of New Reactor Design
''The New York Times'', April 22, 2010.
In March 2012, activists protested at
San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) is a permanently closed nuclear power plant located south of San Clemente, California, on the Pacific coast, in Nuclear Regulatory Commission Region IV. The plant was shut down in 2013 after repl ...
to mark the one-year anniversary of the nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima, Japan. Around 200 people rallied in San Onofre State Beach to listen to several speakers, including two Japanese residents who lived through the Fukushima meltdowns. ''Residents Organizing for Safe Environment'' and several other anti-nuclear energy organizations, organized the event and about 100 activists came in from San Diego. As of March 2012, 23 aging nuclear power plants continue to operate, including some similar in design to those that melted down in Fukushima, such as Vermont Yankee, and Indian Point 2 just 24 miles north of New York City. Vermont Yankee has reached the end of its projected lifetime operation but, despite strong local opposition, the NRC favored extending its license; however, on August 27, 2013, Entergy (VT Yankee's owner) announced it was decommissioning the plant and that "The station is expected to cease power production after its current fuel cycle and move to safe shutdown in the fourth quarter of 2014." On March 22, 2012, "more than 1,000 people marched to the plant in protest, and about 130 engaging in civil disobedience were arrested". According to a 2012
Pew Research Center The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan American think tank (referring to itself as a "fact tank") based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the w ...
poll, 44 percent of Americans favor and 49 percent oppose the promotion of increased use of nuclear power, while 69 percent favor increasing federal funding for research on wind power, solar power, and hydrogen energy technology. In 2013, four aging, uncompetitive, reactors were permanently closed: San Onofre 2 and 3 in California, Crystal River 3 in Florida, and Kewaunee in Wisconsin.
Vermont Yankee Vermont Yankee was an electricity generating nuclear power plant, located in the town of Vernon, Vermont, in the northeastern United States. It generated 620 megawatts (MWe) of electricity at full power. The plant was a boiling water reacto ...
will close in 2014. New York State is seeking to close
Indian Point Energy Center Indian Point Energy Center (I.P.E.C.) is a three-unit nuclear power plant station located in Buchanan, just south of Peekskill, in Westchester County, New York. It sits on the east bank of the Hudson River, about north of Midtown Manhattan. ...
, in Buchanan, 30 miles from New York City. With reference to the pro-nuclear film ''
Pandora's Promise ''Pandora's Promise'' is a 2013 documentary film about the nuclear power debate, directed by Robert Stone. Its central argument is that nuclear power, which still faces historical opposition from environmentalists, is a relatively safe and clean ...
'', economics professor,
John Quiggin John Quiggin (born 29 March 1956) is an Australian economist, a professor at the University of Queensland. He was formerly an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Federation Fellow and a member of the board of the Climate Change Aut ...
, comments that it presents the environmental rationale for nuclear power, but that reviving nuclear power debates is a distraction, and the main problem with the nuclear option is that it is not economically viable. Quiggin says that we need more
efficient energy use Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the process of reducing the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, insulating a building allows it to use less heating and cooling energy to ...
and more
renewable energy commercialization Renewable energy commercialization involves the deployment of three generations of renewable energy technologies dating back more than 100 years. First-generation technologies, which are already mature and economically competitive, include b ...
.


See also


References


Bibliography

*Aron, Joan (1998). '' Licensed to Kill? The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Shoreham Power Plant, University of Pittsburgh Press. * *Byrne, John and Steven M. Hoffman (1996). ''Governing the Atom: The Politics of Risk'', Transaction Publishers. *Clarfield, Gerald H. and William M. Wiecek (1984). ''Nuclear America: Military and Civilian Nuclear Power in the United States 1940–1980'', Harper & Row. *Cragin, Susan (2007). '' Nuclear Nebraska: The Remarkable Story of the Little County That Couldn't Be Bought'', AMACOM. *Dickerson, Carrie B. and Patricia Lemon (1995). ''Black Fox: Aunt Carrie's War Against the Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant'', Council Oak Publishing Company, * Fradkin, Philip L. (2004). '' Fallout: An American Nuclear Tragedy'', University of Arizona Press. *Giugni, Marco (2004). ''Social Protest and Policy Change: Ecology, Antinuclear, and Peace Movements in Comparative Perspective'', Rowman and Littlefield. *Jasper, James M. (1997). ''The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements'', University of Chicago Press, * Lovins, Amory B. and Price, John H. (1975). '' Non-Nuclear Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy'', Ballinger Publishing Company, 1975, *McCafferty, David P. (1991). ''The Politics of Nuclear Power: A History of the Shoreham Power Plant'', Kluwer. *Miller, Byron A. (2000). ''Geography and Social Movements: Comparing Anti-nuclear Activism in the Boston Area'', University of Minnesota Press. *Natti, Susanna and Acker, Bonnie (1979). ''No Nukes: Everyone's Guide to Nuclear Power'', South End Press. *Ondaatje, Elizabeth H. (c1988). ''Trends in Antinuclear Protests in the United States, 1984–1987'', Rand Corporation. *Peterson, Christian (2003). ''Ronald Reagan and Antinuclear Movements in the United States and Western Europe, 1981–1987'', Edwin Mellen Press. *Polletta, Francesca (2002). ''Freedom Is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements'', University of Chicago Press, *Pope, Daniel (2008). '' Nuclear Implosions: The Rise and Fall of the Washington Public Power Supply System'', Cambridge University Press. *Price, Jerome (1982). ''The Antinuclear Movement'', Twayne Publishers. *Smith, Jennifer (Editor), (2002). ''The Antinuclear Movement'', Cengage Gale. * Sovacool, Benjamin K. (2011). ''
Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power ''Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power: A Critical Global Assessment of Atomic Energy'' is a 2011 book by Benjamin K. Sovacool, published by World Scientific. Sovacool’s book addresses the current status of the global nuclear power industry, i ...
: A Critical Global Assessment of Atomic Energy'',
World Scientific World Scientific Publishing is an academic publisher of scientific, technical, and medical books and journals headquartered in Singapore. The company was founded in 1981. It publishes about 600 books annually, along with 135 journals in various f ...
. *Surbrug, Robert (2009). ''Beyond Vietnam: The Politics of Protest in Massachusetts, 1974–1990'',
University of Massachusetts Press The University of Massachusetts Press is a university press that is part of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The press was founded in 1963, publishing scholarly books and non-fiction. The press imprint is overseen by an interdisciplinar ...
. *Walker, J. Samuel (2004). '' Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective'', University of California Press. * Wellock, Thomas R. (1998). '' Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1958–1978'', The University of Wisconsin Press, *Wills, John (2006). '' Conservation Fallout: Nuclear Protest at Diablo Canyon'', University of Nevada Press. *


External links


Cancelled Nuclear Units Ordered in the United States



Public support for new nuclear power plants low, according to UN-backed pollAnti-nuclear renaissance: a powerful but partial and tentative victory over atomic energyNuclear Power's Global Expansion: Weighing Its Costs and Risks
*
Beyond Nuclear Beyond may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Beyond'' (1921 film), an American silent film * ''Beyond'' (2000 film), a Danish film directed by Åke Sandgren, OT: ''Dykkerne'' * ''Beyond'' (2010 film), a Swedish film directed b ...
201
response
to the views of Hansen, Caldeira, Emanuel, and Wigley, about nuclear power. {{Authority control Nuclear energy in the United States Nuclear history of the United States Environmentalism in the United States Social movements in the United States