Anti-nuclear advocacy is a booming business. There are more than 300 anti-nuclear nonprofits in America, including powerhouses such as the Sierra Club, Rocky Mountain Institute, and Environmental Defense Fund. Their combined annual revenue now exceeds $3 billion. But it also persists in unlikely groups such as the League of Women Voters (LWV), the NAACP, and Church World Service.
Why do they hold these positions? The answer is a combination of two factors: low information and what Mike Watson of the Capital Research Center has referred to as “Everything Leftism”.
Nuclear energy has a branding issue, and those who oppose nuclear power exploit the uninformed to push their agenda. A 2024 report by Bisconti Research found that the more people know about nuclear energy, the more likely they are to favor it. In the report, only 4 percent of men and 6 percent of women who were well informed strongly opposed its use. Within the uninformed camp, 51 percent of women and 44 percent of men oppose nuclear energy.
This is especially true on the political left. Pew Research found that while Democrats overwhelmingly support expanding clean energy initiatives like wind and solar, with rates of near 90 percent support, only 49 percent of Democrats support expanding nuclear energy.
The lack of support for nuclear energy among Democrats seems contradictory as it is the most powerful, scalable, and reliable clean energy source. Everything Leftism is to blame.
Everything Leftism is the idea that every material issue is connected and requires a holistic solution. Thus, every leftist advocacy group must align with the rest of the left on all other issues. This collective view underpins why racial justice groups and feminist groups take positions on nuclear energy. Everything Leftism turns climate change from a scientific debate to a societal injustice, allowing for headlines such as “Climate Change and Women’s Rights: Intertwined Crises”.
With environmental issues on the table for everything leftists, uninformed advocacy groups to adopt the anti-nuclear platforms of leftist climate nonprofits. Often this results in countless groups signing onto petition letters like an April 2021 letter where 520 co-signers urged then-President Biden to oppose nuclear energy.
Back in the 1980s the National Organization for Women adopted a resolution that declared nuclear power to be “a threat to the health and reproductive rights of people.” This resolution was still included in their policy manual as late as 1996.
The League of Women Voters’ opposition to nuclear energy began with a 1979 Resolution and still persists. They signed onto an August 2021 letter to Congress which called nuclear energy “too dirty, too dangerous, too expensive, and too slow to solve the climate crisis.” In 2022, a local chapter of the LWV wished to consider nuclear energy alongside its other clean energy initiatives. However, the resolution was shot down by the national chapter because it referred to nuclear energy as “clean”.
Once these false narratives take root institutionally, they are difficult to dislodge.
The NAACP also passed a resolution opposing nuclear energy in 2018. They do not provide a reason for opposing nuclear energy other than deciding to lump it in with fossil fuels as unclean, unsafe, and unnatural. In the fifteen preambular clauses of the resolution, one mentions nuclear energy; the other fourteen only address fossil fuels.
The anti-nuclear clause states, “Instead of exploring fundamentally safer, renewable forms of energy, most fossil fuel industries are still clinging to the use of nuclear or more profitable, but equally, if not more harmful fossil fuels methods, such as natural gas and carbon capture sequestration.”
After wrongfully conflating nuclear energy with fossil fuels, they provide no other explanation for their opposition.Nevertheless, the resolution states that the NAACP “stands in opposition to nuclear energy and attempts to avoid the much needed, inevitable energy transition by merely converting from one fossil fuel source to another.”
The desire to be aligned with climate left activists and misunderstanding nuclear energy led them to resolve against something completely unrelated to their mission to advance racial equity.
Even religious groups join anti-nuclear efforts.
Church World Service (CWS) is one of the richest faith-based nonprofits that signed a letter opposing nuclear energy. Their stance emerged out of CWS’ support for the “nuclear refugees” following the Fukushima earthquake and subsequent reactor meltdown. While this 9.0 on the Richter scale earthquake claimed over 19,500 lives, there was only a
Yet, CWS’ initial compassion following this devastating natural disaster has developed into a blanket renouncement of nuclear energy. At least ten separate religious groups also signed onto a May 2021 letter rejecting nuclear energy as “unproven and unnecessary technology” and a “harmful energy source”.
The devil works hard, but anti-nuclear groups work harder.
