The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes various nuclear technologies. Some direct action groups, environmental movements, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, national, or international level.Fox Butterfield. Professional Groups Flocking to Antinuclear Drive , The New York Times, 27 March 1982. Major anti-nuclear groups include Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Peace Action, Seneca Women's Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. The movement's initial objective was nuclear disarmament, though since the late 1960s, opposition has also included the use of nuclear power. Many anti-nuclear groups oppose both nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The formation of green parties in the 1970s and 1980s was often a direct result of anti-nuclear politics.John Barry and E. Gene Frankland, International Encyclopedia of Environmental Politics, 2001, p. 24.
Scientists and diplomats have debated nuclear weapons policy since before the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The public became concerned about nuclear weapons testing from about 1954, following extensive nuclear testing, including the Castle Bravo disaster. In 1963, many countries ratified the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited atmospheric nuclear testing.
Some local opposition to nuclear power emerged in the early 1960s. In the late 1960s some members of the scientific community began to express their concerns. In the early 1970s, there were large protests about the proposed Wyhl Nuclear Power Plant, in southern 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. Nuclear power became an issue of major public protest in the 1970sJim Falk (1982). Global Fission: The Battle Over Nuclear Power, Oxford University Press, pp. 95–96. and while opposition to nuclear power continues, increasing public support for nuclear power has re-emerged over the last decade in light of growing awareness of global warming and renewed interest in all types of clean energy (see the Pro-nuclear movement).
A protest against nuclear power occurred in July 1977 in Bilbao, Spain, with up to 200,000 people in attendance. Following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, an anti-nuclear protest was held in New York City, involving 200,000 people. In 1981, Germany's largest anti-nuclear power demonstration took place to protest against the Brokdorf Nuclear Power Plant west of Hamburg; some 100,000 people came face to face with 10,000 police officers. The largest protest was held on 12 June 1982, when one million people demonstrated in New York City against nuclear weapons. A 1983 nuclear weapons protest in West Berlin had about 600,000 participants. In May 1986, following the Chernobyl disaster, an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people marched in Rome to protest against the Italian nuclear program. In Australia, unions, peace activists, and environmentalists opposed uranium mining from the 1970s onwards, and rallies bringing together hundreds of thousands of people to oppose nuclear weapons peaked in the mid- 1980s. In the US, public opposition preceded the shutdown of the Shoreham, Yankee Rowe, Millstone 1, Rancho Seco, Maine Yankee, and many other nuclear power plants.
For many years after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, nuclear power was off the policy agenda in most countries, and the anti-nuclear power movement seemed to have won its case, so some anti-nuclear groups disbanded. In the 2000s, however, following public relations activities by the nuclear industry,Jonathan Leake. "The Nuclear Charm Offensive" New Statesman, 23 May 2005.Union of Concerned Scientists. Nuclear Industry Spent Hundreds of Millions of Dollars Over the Last Decade to Sell Public, Congress on New Reactors, New Investigation Finds News Center, 1 February 2010.Nuclear group spent $460,000 lobbying in 4Q Business Week, 19 March 2010. advances in nuclear reactor designs, and concerns about climate change, nuclear power issues came back into energy policy discussions in some countries. The 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident subsequently undermined the nuclear power industry's proposed renaissance and revived opposition to nuclear power worldwide, putting governments on the defensive. As of 2016, countries such as Australia, Austria, Denmark, Greece, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Norway have no nuclear power stations and remain opposed to nuclear power. Germany, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland are phasing-out nuclear power. Sweden formerly had a nuclear phase-out policy, aiming to end nuclear power generation in Sweden by 2010. On 5 February 2009, the Government of Sweden announced an agreement allowing for the replacement of existing reactors, effectively ending the phase-out policy.Erika Simpson and Ian Fairlie, Dealing with nuclear waste is so difficult that phasing out nuclear power would be the best option , Lfpress, 26 February 2016. Globally, the number of operable reactors has remained nearly the same over the last 30 years, and nuclear electricity production has been steadily growing since the Fukushima disaster.
History and issues
Roots of the movement
The application of nuclear technology, as a source of energy and as an instrument of war, has been controversial.Jim Falk (1982). Global Fission: The Battle Over Nuclear Power, Oxford University Press. These issues are discussed in nuclear weapons debate, nuclear power debate, and uranium mining debate.
Scientists and diplomats have debated nuclear weapons policy since before the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.Jerry Brown and Rinaldo Brutoco (1997). Profiles in Power: The Anti-nuclear Movement and the Dawn of the Solar Age, Twayne Publishers, pp. 191–192. The public became concerned about nuclear weapons testing from about 1954, following extensive nuclear testing in the Pacific, with some calling it nuclear imperialism and colonialism. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, about 50,000 women brought together by Women Strike for Peace marched in 60 cities in the United States to demonstrate against nuclear weapons. In 1963, many countries ratified the Partial Test Ban Treaty which prohibited atmospheric nuclear testing.Wolfgang Rudig (1990). Anti-nuclear Movements: A World Survey of Opposition to Nuclear Energy, Longman, p. 54–55.
Some local opposition to nuclear power emerged in the early 1960s, and, in the late 1960s, some members of the scientific community began expressing their concerns.Wolfgang Rudig (1990). Anti-nuclear Movements: A World Survey of Opposition to Nuclear Energy, Longman, p. 52. In the early 1970s, there were large protests about the proposed Wyhl Nuclear Power Plant in southern 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. Nuclear power became an issue of major public protest in the 1970s.
Fossil fuels industry The fossil fuel industry starting from the 1950s was engaging in campaigns against the nuclear industry which it perceived as a threat to their commercial interests. Organizations such as the American Petroleum Institute, the Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association and Marcellus Shale Coalition were engaged in anti-nuclear lobbying in the late 2010s and from 2019, large fossil fuel suppliers started advertising campaigns portraying fossil gas as a "perfect partner for renewables" (wording from Shell and Statoil advertisements). Groups like the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council are receiving grants from other fossil fuel companies. As of 2011, a strategy paper released by Greenpeace titled "Battle of Grids" proposed gradual replacement of nuclear power by fossil gas plants which would provide "flexible backup for wind and solar power". However, Greenpeace has since distanced itself from advocating for fossil gas, instead proposing grid energy storage as a solution to issues caused by intermittent renewable energy. In Germany, the Energiewende, which was advertised as a shift to renewable energy but included a gradual phaseout of nuclear power from 2000 to the end of 2022, caused, among other things, a rise in fossil gas power production from 49.2 TWh in 2000 to 94.7 TWh in 2020. In the same interval total electricity generation barely changed (576.6 TWh in 2000 vs 574.2 TWh in 2020) while it did rise and fall in the meantime, reaching a peak of 652.9 TWh in 2017. As much of that fossil gas was, and remains, imported from Russia, controversial pipeline projects like Nord Stream 1 were built to meet rising German gas demand. After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine it came to light that significant amounts of Russian lobbying was involved in both the continued anti-nuclear movement in Germany and the anti-fracking movement.
Anti-nuclear perspectives
Concerns about nuclear weapons
From an anti-nuclear point of view, there is a threat to modern civilization from global nuclear war by accidental or deliberate nuclear strike. Some climate scientists estimate that a war between two countries that resulted in 100 Hiroshima-size atomic explosions would cause significant loss of life, in the tens of millions, from climatic effects alone, as well as disable future generations. Soot thrown up into the atmosphere could blanket the earth, causing food chain disruption in what is termed a nuclear winter.
Many anti-nuclear weapons groups cite the 1996 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, in which it found that 'the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict'.
Ridding the world of nuclear weapons has been a cause for pacifists for decades. But more recently, mainstream politicians and retired military leaders have advocated nuclear disarmament. In January 2007 an article in The Wall Street Journal, authored by Henry Kissinger, Bill Perry, George Shultz and Sam Nunn. These men were veterans of the Cold War who believed in using nuclear weapons for deterrence. But they now reversed their previous position and asserted that instead of making the world safer, nuclear weapons had become a source of extreme concern.
Since the 1970s, some countries have built their own second-strike capability of massive deterrence in the event of a military attack with weapons of mass destruction. Two examples of this second-strike capability are Israel's Samson Option strategy and Russia's Dead Hand system. During the era of nuclear weapons testing, many local communities were affected, and some are still affected by uranium mining and radioactive waste disposal.Frida Berrigan. The New Anti-Nuclear Movement Foreign Policy in Focus, 16 April 2010.
It should, however, be noted that countries can possess nuclear weapons without possessing nuclear power plants (as is almost certainly the case with Israel) or indeed the reverse, as is the case with most users of nuclear power, past and present.
Concerns about nuclear power