As of March 30, 2015, Rebecca Riffkin, of the Gallup Poll group, reports that a slim majority of Americans (51%) now favor the use of nuclear energy for electricity in the U.S., while 43% oppose it. This level of support is similar to what Gallup found when it last measured these attitudes two years ago, but it is down from the peak of 62% five years ago. Current support is on the low end of what Gallup has found in the past 20 years, with the 46% reading in 2001 the only time that it sank lower.
The high point in support for the use of nuclear power, in 2010, was recorded shortly after President Barack Obama announced that the federal government would provide loan guarantees for the construction of two nuclear reactors, the first to be built in the U.S. in three decades. Support has generally dropped since then. However, between 2011 and 2012, support was stable, with 57% favoring nuclear energy. This is notable given that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant incident caused by the tsunamis took place shortly after polling in 2011. This incident is often confused with the disaster created by the tsunamis, but the incident neither caused any deaths nor cases of radiation sickness.
The latest result comes from the Gallup annual Environment poll, conducted March 5-8, 2015. In the same poll, 35% of Americans say the U.S. should put more emphasis on nuclear power, while 33% favor less emphasis and 28% think the emphasis should remain the same as it is now. A majority of Americans favor putting more emphasis on solar energy, wind and natural gas.
This suggests that those polled are politically aligned to an extent, but when adding in the impact of their views on climate change and the actual impact of the nuclear incident, the positive features of nuclear power (or the negative features of solar and wind) have been minimized.
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