When looking at the past thirty years, public acceptability for nuclear energy production appears to have oscillated. As mentioned before, the unresolved waste issue coming to the fore in the 1970s, followed by the accidents at Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986), marked the end of the era of uni-vocal enthusiasm and confidence. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, many nuclear nations, particularly in Europe, placed a moratorium on the construction of new nuclear reactors or even decided to phase-out their nuclear power programmes altogether. Also, in countries where no official change in policy was adopted, nuclear did seem to have lost its popularity.

However, what halfway into the 1990s may have looked like the certain decline of the nuclear industry, some ten years later seemed overturned as two new influential discourses in the public arena, climate change and energy security, were mobilised to reframe nuclear power as a potential means to tackle both (e. g. Bickerstaff et al. , 2008). This shift heralded what supporters saw as a potential ‘nuclear renaissance’ and opponents as an unwelcome resurrection of nuclear power at the dawn of the new century. In Europe, Finland started building a new reactor, the UK launched a pro-nuclear policy and designated potential sites for new build, and other countries, among which were a number of countries who earlier had adopted phase-out policies, again started to consider building new reactors. In its annual report of 2009, the IAEA announced that: ‘More than 60 countries — mostly in the developing world — have informed the Agency that they might be interested in launching nuclear power programmes’ (IAEA, 2010: 19). A total of 55 new reactors were under construction in January 2010 (Idem 21). For those in favour of nuclear energy, there was reason to be optimistic again. Chernobyl was now well behind us and ‘major developments in the nuclear fuel cycle’ (Kazimi et al. , 2011: vii) were manifest. Among these: the start-up of a commercial nuclear fuel processing plant in Japan, and the siting of geological repositories for the disposal of spent fuel in Finland and Sweden (Idem). Nevertheless, results from a Eurobarometer survey on nuclear safety still showed that more than 50% of Europeans think that the risks of nuclear energy outweigh its advantages. Only one third saw nuclear energy more as an advantageous source of energy than as a risk (EC, 2007: 17).

Then, at the dawn of this new era in which talking about new nuclear was clearly no longer a taboo, 25 years after Chernobyl, a major earthquake and tsunami hit the Fukushima power plant in Japan. The precise impact of this accident on the environment is still unknown to date. So too are the consequences for the public acceptability of nuclear power generation. News bulletins show that in Japan, critical voices are rising against nuclear power generation, and against the confusing messages of the power company TEPCO and the government. The German government has announced a full phase-out after strong public protest, the Swiss government refused the application for three new nuclear reactors, and the Italian public overwhelmingly voted against a re-entry into nuclear energy production in a referendum in June 2011. However, in other countries, such as France and the Czech Republic, governments do not seem inclined to immediately review their positive attitude vis-a-vis nuclear power generation.

Both opponents and proponents of nuclear energy claim to see Fukushima as the beginning of yet another new era. For the former, it constitutes the one accident too many that is likely to announce the final downfall of the industry: ‘If there was no obvious sign that the international nuclear industry could eventually turn the empirically evident downward trend into a promising future, the Fukushima disaster is likely to accelerate the decline’ (Schneider et al., 2011: 5). Proponents, however, are sure that Fukushima will not mean the end of nuclear but, rather, the seed of a new beginning. They refer, among other things, to promising new technologies that could provide even safer reactors, with ‘walk-away safety’ reactors as the final goal, able to shut down and cool themselves without electricity or human intervention (Lester, 2011). While technological innovation remained slow and incremental after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, Fukushima is anticipated to pave the way for the nuclear technology of the future, making nuclear energy production ‘demonstrably safer and less expensive, more secure against the threats of nuclear proliferation and terrorism, and more compatible with the capabilities of electric power systems and the utilities that run them’ (Idem). Who will be proven right or wrong, remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that, with regard to the operation of nuclear reactors, the question of how safe is safe enough, which cannot be addressed or answered solely from a technical risk assessment perspective, will be at the core of any debate on the acceptability of future nuclear power generation.