Chernobyl reinforced the downward trend in favourable attitudes to nuclear power that began with TMI. Figure 1.2 illustrates the results of surveys by CBS in the USA and shows that, prior to TMI, those in favour in building new NPPs were in a significant majority. After TMI, this majority was converted to a minority which became even smaller after Chernobyl. Even ignoring Fukushima, the pre-TMI situation has still not been recovered. That said, of the many questions that might be asked in a survey, those that, as here, refer to the building of new NPPs are the

most likely to produce a negative response to nuclear power. A ‘softer’ question relating to, say, ‘the use of nuclear energy as one of the ways to provide electricity’ is more likely to elicit a positive response and, using this and similar questions, the Nuclear Energy Institute has been able to demonstrate a steady increase in positive attitudes to nuclear power in the USA since 198220 (62% answering favourably to this question in September 2011).

The Eurobarometer surveys22 show that public acceptance of nuclear power in the European Union reached a low point in the few years after Chernobyl and, depending on how acceptance is measured, has recovered slowly. There is significant variability between member states but a consistent finding over the years is that people are more likely to believe that the risks of nuclear power are tolerable if they live in a country that has NPPs. Nevertheless, France, with the largest reactor fleet in Europe, is the most sceptical of the ‘has-NPPs’ group. Here, the percentage of people who believe that NPPs present a high risk to the population fluctuated between 40 and 48% in the period 1997-2010, jumping to 55% after Fukushima.23 Nuclear power was thought to be the most risky of a long list of suggested industrial activities and, 25 years on, Chernobyl was most often cited in support of this view.

An extreme example of the impact of Chernobyl is Italy, which had four reactors in operation in 1986. In terms of risk perception, its opinion spread prior to the accident was quite typical of a country that operates NPPs. Shortly after Chernobyl, however, the country voted to close all the operating reactors since when its views have come into line with the ‘no-NPPs’ group. Notwithstanding that 10% of Italy’s electricity is nuclear, imported from France, the anti-nuclear stance formed by Chernobyl seems to have been reinforced by the Fukushima accident because a new build programme proposed by the government in 2008 was rejected by a referendum in June 2011.

The World Nuclear Association notes that there have been three major reactor accidents in the history of civil nuclear power (Table 1.1) and estimates that, over the same period, world experience extends to 14 500 reactor years. This is equivalent to a major accident probability of about 1 in 4800 reactor years. There are currently around 450 nuclear reactors worldwide which suggests that, if safety

standards remain unchanged, a major accident may be expected roughly every decade. Given the reactions to previous accidents, such a frequency must raise doubts about the continuing social and political acceptability of nuclear power. Of course, safety standards do evolve and, each time there is an accident, regulators become more vigilant and measures are taken to improve safety. What is clear, however, is the absolute necessity of doing this. A parallel may be made with airlines where the accident rate for commercial jets has fallen by about two orders of magnitude in fifty years.24