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Energy and Environment
Published in T.M. Aggarwal, Environmental Control in Thermal Power Plants, 2021
Some local opposition to nuclear power emerged in the early 1960s, and in the late 1960s some members of the scientific community began to express their concerns. These concerns related to nuclear accidents, nuclear proliferation, high cost of nuclear power plants, nuclear terrorism and radioactive waste disposal. In the early 1970s, there were large protests about a proposed nuclear power plant in Wyhl, Germany. The project was cancelled in 1975 and anti-nuclear success at Wyhl inspired opposition to nuclear power in other parts of Europe and North America. By the mid-1970s anti-nuclear activism had moved beyond local protests and politics to gain a wider appeal and influence, and nuclear power became an issue of major public protest.[95] Although it lacked a single co-ordinating organization, and did not have uniform goals, the movement’s efforts gained a great deal of attention. In some countries, the nuclear power conflict “reached an intensity unprecedented in the history of technology controversies”.
Nuclear and Hydro Power
Published in Anco S. Blazev, Energy Security for The 21st Century, 2021
The Three Mile Island accident prompted another wave of similar protests starting in 1979, with the largest anti-nuclear demonstration at the time held in May 1979 in Washington, DC. Sixty-five thousand people, including some prominent politicians, attended a march and rally against nuclear power. Then in September, about 200,000 anti-nuclear demonstrators attended a similar protest against nuclear power as well. These protests and their aftermath are engraved in the American psyche, and were very successful, as they are primarily responsible for the shutdown of the Shoreham, Yankee Rowe, Millstone I, Rancho Seco, Maine Yankee, and a dozen other nuclear power plants around the country at the time.
Nuclear power
Published in Anthony N. Penna, A History of Energy Flows, 2019
The tragedy of Chernobyl empowered anti-nuclear power advocates. As one USSR reporter recalled after visiting the scene, “Chernobyl was a warning for the future. It was not just a banal disaster, it was a message that nuclear power was not safe.”19 Despite improvements in design with multiple computer-coded mechanisms to prevent another Chernobyl, the matter of safety continued to plague the industry. The industry felt the impact of the meltdowns at TMI and Chernobyl. A breakdown in the safety system of one nuclear power plant caused a chain reaction throughout the industry. To assuage the public’s fears, the U.S. Congress updated and renewed the Price–Anderson Act and capped liability at US$7 billion up from US$700 million. This legislation reflected the strong anti–nuclear power sentiment in the U.S. Congress and placed additional financial liability on the nuclear power industry.
Public participation and democratization: effects on the production and consumption of science and technology
Published in Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, 2020
The eradication of technologies as a result of organized citizen resistance is infrequent, and does not always result in the complete extinction of a technological trajectory. The anti-nuclear movement embraced the cause of disarmament and the end of nuclear reactors to generate energy, given its risks. Although with limited gains on the first front, activism was essential to the signature of arms control treaties and freezing armament campaigns (Coburn 2017). The success was greater on the second front, causing the delay, suspension or cooling pace of nuclear plants construction in the United States and in some European countries (Kitschelt 1986). In what was then West Germany, anti-nuclear activism, strengthened in the 1970s, was successful in freezing nuclear infrastructure after the Chernobyl disaster (Rucht 1990). Later, the Fukushima tragedy accelerated German actions to completely shut down nuclear reactors by 2022 (Feldhoff 2014) and invigorated anti-nuclear movements in several countries, including Japan (Eijii 2016), and created new movements in India (Choudhury 2012).