Impact of new social movements on attitudes towards nuclear energy

Task 1.2 has two aims: first, to provide insight into the motivations behind and experiences with public participation in protest and advocacy movements focused on energy, sustainability, and climate change, with a particular emphasis on nuclear energy; second, to explore the motivations and rationales of ecomodernism, both as a concept and as a movement.

The document combines the results of three separate studies. The first two are related to the first aim and uses surveys to examine the attitudes of protesters at anti-nuclear protests and climate change protests; First, an original survey was carried out at an environmental protest in London, UK, in 2023. Second, we use existing survey data collected at anti-nuclear protests in 2011-2012 in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and the UK. The third short study relates to the second aim of this task, which is to highlight the concept of ‘ecomodernism’ and the way it inspires a relatively recent ‘movement’ critical towards traditional (anti-nuclear) environmental activism. Typical of ecomodernism is the (often radical) pro-nuclear position, in contrast to traditional environmentalism. Given the recent phenomenon and the fact that no data exists yet that would allow understanding of how this recent vision could shape public opinion, we restrict ourselves in this report to a short literature study.