A strategy for nuclear communications – listen
Not a day goes by when we don’t read something about the public acceptance problem in the nuclear industry. A recent article preaching the end of the nuclear era had a pretty strong statement that sums up like this – “Nuclear looks ever more like a 20th-century dinosaur, unloved by investors, the public, and policymakers alike.” While I don’t believe this is actually the case, I am sure that many in the public would not find much to fault with it. And that is the challenge we face.
For more than 30 years we have been hearing that the public just don’t understand the nuclear message – that we need to better educate them – and that while we are all smart folks we are very bad at communicating. Yawn……
As an industry, we pride ourselves on maintaining detailed OPEX from around the world and learning lessons to foster continuous operations improvement. Yet, while there has actually been a lot of recent good work on communicating with the public, in this non-technical area we are much slower in leaning the lessons we need to learn.
Beliefs about nuclear power are well entrenched in society. Most of the concerns come from its weapons origin and a significant fear of radiation that will not just go away with a simple explanation or better education.
This fear translates into fears about nuclear power plants. It is a common belief that we are safely operating doomsday machines. i.e. that a nuclear accident can have such far reaching consequences that it can literally destroy the world. If that is one’s belief how can you convince him or her to support this technology? Talking about low probabilities is of little interest when the perceived consequence is so dire.
Yet, there is hope. There is generational change coming and this new generation is not afraid of technology, but rather sees it as the solution to everything. They have other issues on their minds such as climate change – they likely don’t think much about nuclear power at all.
In our home country of Canada, a recent small study shows very interesting results. Without any scene setting, a simple question on whether the public is in favour of nuclear power shows about a fifth in favour, a third against and the most, about half in the undecided column. This probably demonstrates that nuclear power is not a top of mind issue for many Canadians. However, what is important about this study is that once the question is asked again, if prefaced by some scenarios providing information – such as today nuclear provides 17% of electricity in Canada but less than 1% of carbon emissions; or that Canada has more than 50 years of operating nuclear plants safely; or that small reactors may provide much needed energy to help in Canada’s remote communities; then the result is quite different. The chart below suggests that given a positive reason to think about nuclear power, people are likely to change their view with support growing and opposition declining. The lesson here is that people can be open to a new discussion about nuclear power BUT this must be on the basis of them considering that it is a possible solution to an issue of relative importance to them.
Or to be more clear, the first step is not trying to reduce the fear of nuclear. Without giving people a reason to listen you may as well be talking to yourself. What is needed is to LISTEN, understand what issues are important to the public and demonstrate that nuclear power is a possible solution. Whether their issue is climate change, energy poverty in the far north, energy innovation, high quality job creation, or just electricity reliability; it is only by addressing these issues that there will be an appetite for listening to us to find out more.
A great example is the group Environmental Progress in the USA. Here is a world renown life long environmentalist, Michael Shellenberger, taking up the fight to support nuclear power as a tool to meet environmental goals. I don’t know Michael personally but I would guess that he didn’t just wake up one day with a huge aha moment and decide nuclear power is a fantastic technology that he wanted to support; but rather he looked for solutions to what is important to him, the environment. This is clearly set out in the EP mission – “Nature and Prosperity for All – Environmental Progress (EP) was founded to achieve two big goals: lift all humans out of poverty, and save the natural environment. These goals can be achieved by mid-century — but only if we remove the obstacles to cheap, reliable and clean energy.” I expect that over time, in his quest to improve the environment, he came to consider nuclear as an option and became open to listening and learning more about whether this option would help to achieve these goals.
I have read many of the posts by EP and they are excellent. But what is of interest to me as an industry person is that the arguments being made in support of nuclear power are not new. In fact, they are mostly the same arguments we have been making for the more than the 35 years we have been in this industry. So, what has changed? The dialogue. Once there was a clear goal that is not directly about nuclear power, there became an openness to learn more about those options that can help meet that goal. And then the facts can be discussed and as we know, the facts tell a good story.
What do we learn here? We have a huge opportunity today to change the discussion about nuclear power, but the first step is to stop and listen. It’s not about talking about safety and the LNT model for radiation protection; it’s about understanding the issues of importance to a new generation and then having a conversation to show that nuclear can be part of the solution. Just trying to educate has taken us nowhere. But once we listen, then we can expect others to open their minds and listen too. Only then can we say that nuclear power is not a 20th – century dinosaur; but rather is a technological wonder able to produce the huge amounts of clean reliable energy required for the 21st century and beyond.
Note: This is one of a series of posts to engage in a healthy discussion on public acceptance and nuclear advocacy. As we think about these issues we would like to point out an excellent book by Meredith Angwin, “Campaigning for Clean Air: Strategies for Pro-Nuclear Advocacy”. If you are at all interested in nuclear advocacy, this is a must read.
6 Comments
Cosmos Voutsinos · May 25, 2017 at 9:32 pm
Terry, Thanks for the letter. From my perspective I have found that trying to change peoples emotion (fear for nuclear) with logic is a waist of time. So I have changed my approach in which I don’t contradict or question people’s fears. Instead, I look at how nuclear technology could evolve in such a way as to address people’s fears. This includes “meltdown”, “long term rad-waste”, “proliferation” and finally “cost”. The combination of SMR’s that include “breeders” and LFTR’s address all these popular concerns: liquid fuel addresses “meltdown”; Thorium/Uranium breeders address “long term rad-waste”; Refuelling a liquid fuel on the go eliminates “proliferation” and finally a 60 year life time of SMR’s more than addresses the “cost”. issue. And the question that I raise is why we are still siting on a 60 year old technology of water-cooled large reactors that, although we keep improving, we do not manage to eliminate the public fears.
This approach has resulted in an easy turn around of peoples and opening their minds in the direction of accepting (somehow) a technology that started badly but has no boundaries on its possibilities to supply plenty of clean and safe energy for a growing humanity.
rennie caplan · May 27, 2017 at 3:56 pm
you have changed my mind about the fear of nuclear power
well done
Francois Perchet · May 28, 2017 at 1:29 pm
Dear Cosmos: About SMR s and their wonders, and why are we still sticking with a 60 years old technology… Please, do keep in mind that these new wonderful reactors with liquid fuel and breeding capacities only exist on paper, or, on CAD format in computers. Gone is the time of the 50 ies and 60 ies when ideas could be turned into reality in a decade or less (jet planes, atomic piles for powering submarines, going to the moon, computers…). We need to be careful too in this industry by letting scientists in their lab, or in front of computer screen communicate about thé latest wonderful technology that will save the world. Generation 2 +++ (??!?) reactors are being built on China, 5 every year. Generation 3 reactors will be built in the next decade. But unfortunately, state of the art and revolutionary new design are not ready.
The current ones, operating, or being built, are good enough to fulfill their promise of cheap enough, 365/7/24.. reliable and safe enough and almost co2 free electricity…
Cosmos Voutsinos · May 29, 2017 at 1:06 pm
Francois Greetings. I agree with all of your comments; however, I have to add a couple clarifications:
Breeder reactors (large ones) have been built and operated successfully for years now. An experimental Liquid fuel reactor with Thorium fuel was operating in the USA for 5 years. Some (but not all yet) of the actual running problems have been resolved for both types of reactors. Consequently, a great part of their design does not exist only theoretical on paper. During the 50’s and the 60’s Governments provided plentiful financing, project efficiency was high to the point that units could be built in a decade and Canada had reached a leading technological position. This is not the case today and technical capability is been lost due to retirements. Meanwhile, our ex-clients, China and Korea are exporting Canadian technology to the world.
Recently, Chalk River received a $800 million federal grant for infrastructure. They have the ability, perhaps better than anybody else in the world, to at least start a project of evaluating the missing parts in the SMR technologies. Unfortunately, nothing like this is happening, as far as I know. The money is used instead to build new labs with better equipment, at the same time that the existing powerhouse of expertise is retiring.
On a personal basis, I started as a design engineer for Pickering B and Pt. Lepreau stations, but then I branched into the International Nuclear business and that took me to Belgium, China, Korea, Taiwan and the USA where I acquired a broader view of my industry, not only as a design engineer, but also, as a construction manager for two PWR’s, as OEM for nuclear equipment , as designer of an electrical grid and power plant system immune to warfare, and of automated decontamination systems, just to name a few. As you can see I am not a narrowly focused lab scientist. Now perched in my retirement chair I keep looking at the industry I love and gave my life to. If my vision is not clear, perhaps it is blurred by my tears.
James Smith · May 29, 2017 at 7:17 pm
This article points out some very worthwhile observations. It has long been recognized by professional sales people that listening is more important than talking. We have a saying; you have one mouth and two ears, use them in that proportion. Having said that, “selling” nuclear is difficult, for several reasons. First, for many people anti-nuclear has become almost a religion, whether it is based on correct information or not. Anti-nuclear spokespersons can easily conjure up terrifying visions of worldwide destruction and lead it to a conclusion that nuclear must be destroyed. For lots of people, this is religion and a good sales person knows never to challenge religion. Another key point about selling nuclear is that one must recognize that there is no single target audience. This article focuses on the “new generation”, educated, friendly with technology, and environmentally conscious, so the safety, clean nature etc. of nuclear is generally well received. In Canada now we have more Seniors than we have children. Seniors represent o big voice in this debate, and the big deal to them is reliable and affordable power. People are, in general, more concerned about paying the bills than abstract theoretical concerns about the environment, and are usually lazy enough about understanding the environment to get sucked in by “inconvenient” super-simplified descriptions of a very complex issue. There is a danger for the pro-nukes to try to fight fire with fire. As a developer of SMRs, I can tell you with certainty that we are making a mistake by trying to over-emphasize the simplicity and beauty of SMRs. This reminds me of Admiral Rickover’s description of “academic” reactors (simple, small, cheap, light, built quickly, flexible in purpose, but “to be built in the future”), vs “practical” reactors (being built now, behind schedule, requires an immense amount of development work, expensive, long schedule, heavy and complicated). Pro-nukes are making SMR’s out to be “academic reactors”, and hence the way of the future. The first NuScale reactor, at 50 MWe, is now projected to cost over $1B, even though the first shovel has yet to be put into the ground. NuScale is apparently spending about $12M/month on engineering. Even at that, NuScale is just a small PWR, with a 15,000 page licensing submission. Imagine what will happen with non-water cooled reactors where the technology is not nearly so well known. It is easy to develop a liquid metal or molten salt “academic reactor”, but the practical reactor version will be a nightmare. Westinghouse several years ago shelved their small PWR (225 MWe), and recently B&W and Bechtel abandoned mPower (180 MWe) after spending about $500M on it, mostly of US Government funds. I think it is great that countries like Korea and China have grown to the point of selling internationally the reactors they have perfected domestically. Korea in particular has perfected the 1400 MWe PWR, and they are building 4 in the UAE to full international standards and safeguards. Pricing at $3500/kw is very competitive. We should not see this as a loss for Canada so much as big win for our nuclear partners.
Cosmos Voutsinos · May 31, 2017 at 2:24 pm
The technical and economic problems ahead for the SMRs are abundant and complex. This however should not be a reason to ignore them. NuScale has shown the way to proceed. By jumping with both feet at the deep end it has managed to resolve the problems associated with scaling a commercially proven technology down to 1/24 th the size. We need much more than that before we can convince the general public to accept nuclear. Question: Has Chalk River included any SMR research facilities in its new mandate to upgrade infrastructure. For example are there any labs for testing the corrosive nature of liquid salts. At this point I rest my case.
Comments are closed.