Ambivalence on Nuclear Energy: a Problem of Public Opinion

Résumé En

The health crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, and perhaps above all the war in Ukraine, have largely contributed to breaking some of European energy taboos towards more collective and coordinated approaches. In this context, nuclear energy seems to have become a credible alternative again, thanks to the discussion on EU level Green Taxonomy and the political window of opportunity which places the imperative of energy security at the centre of the energy debate. In this context, this presentation focuses on the rapid shift of public opinions in some European countries towards nuclear energy and tries to offer some explanation. From the ordinary citizens’ point of view, the problems that focus the public’s attention and constitute macro-frameworks for them have changed between 2020 & 2022. The clear decline in risk-related concerns, the continuation of environmental ones and the rise of the cost-of-living problem have paved a way for a framework more favorable to nuclear power. However, this change in the macro-frameworks does not fully explain the opinion shift. The specific case of France shows that the renewed public support for nuclear power owes much to political events. Strongly linked to the electoral cycles of 2021 & 2022, the rise of nuclear energy in the French public opinion thus precedes the outbreak of war in Ukraine and was reframed first by local political events, then by national ones. Two lessons can be learned. First, some focusing events have the power to reframing rapidly the attention of both the European public opinion and policy-makers. Second, apart from those events, dynamic of opinions can be explained by the role of partisan systems and their shaping of what constitute problems of interest for ordinary citizens.