‘Don’t Think of Fukushima!’: The Ethics of Risk Reframing in ‘Nuclear for Climate’ Communications

ABSTRACT

In recent years an assemblage of nuclear energy proponents has coalesced around the notion of ‘Climate First’ – arguing that nuclear power is a necessary component of the fight against climate change. One noteworthy addition to the Climate First fold is the semi-formalized communications campaign Nuclear for Climate (N4C). This article builds upon a previous ethical critique of Climate First by conducting a comparison of the extent of risk concept disclosure seen within N4C’s key messaging and more ‘traditional’ Climate First texts. The article demonstrates how there has been a noticeable shift in the communications strategy of N4C vis-à-vis ‘traditionalists’, and moreover that models of environmental framing and affective heuristics help to explain the strategic value of this risk reframing for the nuclear industry. It further argues that this reframing of risk gives rise to an ethical paradox, wherein strategic advocates of nuclear energy as a climate mitigation tool could be compelled to withhold important aspects of the nuclear story from the public to promote what they understand to be an urgently-needed tool for saving the planet.

KEYWORDS:

• Nuclear energy
• climate change
• risk communication
• environmental ethics

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank all anonymous reviewers for their feedback, as well as Alida J. Doelle for her research assistance. Thanks are also due to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding which made this publication possible [grant number 756-2014-0532].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The full list of organizations can be found in a document prepared by Nuclear for Climate (2015b).

2. While this article focuses on commentators within the Climate First fold, it is important to emphasize that there exists a robust literature expressly warning against using nuclear energy as a climate mitigation tool (Caldicott, 2006; Cohen & McKillop, 2012; Shrader-Frechette, 2011; Smith, 2006).

3. Lakoff claims that this type of negation narrative has been employed by the Democratic Party in the United States, which, he argues, has been largely ineffective in changing popular opinion because it has a) failed to understand how public opinion is largely the result of an affective process, and b) has only served to strengthen Republican messages by trying to use logic against them.

4. As a caveat, the analysis excluded 1 video from the channel which was a recording of a conference session with a run-time of 1.5 hours.

5. The latter can be further divided into four main categories of nuclear risk, as identified in the methods section above.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [756-2014-0532].