Global Support for Nuclear

A worldwide poll has shown widely varying level of support for the use of  nuclear energy. A large majority countries that use nuclear want to keep doing so, but only a few nations showed strong support. The poll included some 23 countries and gave respondents three options for what should be done regarding the use of nuclear power plants: shut them down as soon as possible; build new ones; or keep using current plants but not build more.

• countries that expressed dominant anti-nuclear views were Germany, Mexico, Russia and Spain
• countries that support nuclear were China, Pakistan, the UK and USA
• majority in Brazil, France and Japan  choosing to either keep operating plants or build new ones
• in India some people recorded no opinion with the remainder split quite evenly between the three choices
• in total the 12 countries polled that use nuclear energy counted 61% of people as supporting continued operation or new build
• the same question was also asked of people in countries not using nuclear energy: Chile, Ecuador, Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Philippines and Turkey. Among those are four that are actively preparing to a possible start in nuclear energy

Resources: Patchy Global Support for Nuclear New-Build, World Nuclear News- WNN, 25 November 2011