Anti-nuclear movement in the United States

The anti-nuclear movement in the United States consists of more than 80 anti-nuclear

Anti-nuclear

The anti-nuclear movement is a social movement that opposes the use of nuclear technologies. Many direct action groups, environmental groups, and professional organisations have identified themselves with the movement at the local, national, and international level...

groups which have acted to oppose nuclear power

Nuclear power

Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...

or nuclear weapons, or both, in the United States. These groups include the Abalone Alliance

Abalone alliance

The Abalone Alliance was a nonviolent civil disobedience group formed to shut down the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo on the central California coast in the United States...

, Clamshell Alliance

Clamshell Alliance

The Clamshell Alliance is an anti-nuclear organization co-founded by Paul Gunter, Howie Hawkins, Harvey Wasserman, Guy Chichester and other activists in 1976. The alliance's coalescence began in 1975 as New England activists and organizations began to respond to U.S...

, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research

Institute for Energy and Environmental Research

The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research focuses on the environmental safety of nuclear weapons production, ozone layer depletion, and other issues relating to energy. IEER publishes a variety of books on energy-related issues, conducts workshops for activists on nuclear issues, and...

, Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

The Nuclear Information and Resource Service is an anti-nuclear group founded in 1978 to be the information and networking center for citizens and organizations concerned about nuclear power, radioactive waste, radiation and sustainable energy issues...

, and Physicians for Social Responsibility

Physicians for Social Responsibility

Physicians for Social Responsibility is the largest physician-led organization in the USA working to protect the public from the what they consider threats of nuclear proliferation, climate change, and environmental toxins...

. The anti-nuclear movement has delayed construction or halted commitments to build some new nuclear plants, and has pressured the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Nuclear Regulatory Commission

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is an independent agency of the United States government that was established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 from the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and was first opened January 19, 1975...

to enforce and strengthen the safety regulations for nuclear power plants.

Anti-nuclear

Anti-nuclear

protests reached a peak in the 1970s and 1980s and grew out of the environmental movement

Environmental movement

The environmental movement, a term that includes the conservation and green politics, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues....

. Campaigns which captured national public attention involved the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant

Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant

The Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant located on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay near Lusby, Calvert County, Maryland.-Overview:...

, Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant

Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant

The Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant, more commonly known as Seabrook Station, is a nuclear power plant located in Seabrook, New Hampshire, approximately north of Boston and south of Portsmouth. Two units were planned, but the second unit was never completed due to construction delays, cost overruns...

, Diablo Canyon Power Plant

Diablo Canyon Power Plant

Diablo Canyon Power Plant is an electricity-generating nuclear power plant at Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, California. The plant has two Westinghouse-designed 4-loop pressurized-water nuclear reactors operated by Pacific Gas & Electric. The facility is located on about in Avila Beach,...

, Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant

Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant

The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was a completed General Electric nuclear boiling water reactor located adjacent to the Wading River in East Shoreham, New York...

, and Three Mile Island. On June 12, 1982, one million people demonstrated in New York City's Central Park

Central Park

Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...

against nuclear weapons and for an end to the cold war

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

arms race

Arms race

The term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation...

. It was the largest anti-nuclear protest

Demonstration (people)

A demonstration or street protest is action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause; it normally consists of walking in a mass march formation and either beginning with or meeting at a designated endpoint, or rally, to hear speakers.Actions such as...

and the largest political demonstration in American history. International Day of Nuclear Disarmament protests were held on June 20, 1983 at 50 sites across the United States.
There were many Nevada Desert Experience

Nevada Desert Experience

The Nevada Desert Experience is a name for the movement to stop U.S. nuclear weapons testing that came into use in the middle 1980s. It is also the name of a particular anti-nuclear organization which continues to create public events to question the morality and intelligence of the U.S. nuclear...

protests and peace camps at the Nevada Test Site

Nevada Test Site

The Nevada National Security Site , previously the Nevada Test Site , is a United States Department of Energy reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about northwest of the city of Las Vegas...

during the 1980s and 1990s.

More recent campaigning by anti-nuclear groups has related to several nuclear power plants including the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant, Indian Point Energy Center

Indian Point Energy Center

Indian Point Energy Center is a three-unit nuclear power plant station located in Buchanan, New York just south of Peekskill. It sits on the east bank of the Hudson River, 38 miles north of New York City...

, Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station

Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station

Oyster Creek nuclear power station is a single unit 636 MWe boiling water reactor power plant located on an 800 acre site adjacent to the Oyster Creek in the Forked River section of Lacey Township in Ocean County, New Jersey. The facility is currently owned and operated by Exelon Corporation and...

, Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station

Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station

Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station is currently the only nuclear power plant operating in the United States Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is located in the Manomet section of Plymouth on Cape Cod Bay, south of the tip of Rocky Point and north of Priscilla Beach...

, Salem Nuclear Power Plant

Salem Nuclear Power Plant

The Salem Nuclear Power Plant is a two unit pressurized water reactor nuclear power station located in Lower Alloways Creek Township, New Jersey, in the United States. It is owned by PSEG Nuclear LLC and Exelon Generation LLC....

, and Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant

Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant

Vermont Yankee is a General Electric boiling water reactor type nuclear power plant currently owned by Entergy. It is located in the town of Vernon, Vermont, and generates 620 megawatts of electricity at full power. The plant began commercial operations in 1972...

. There have also been campaigns relating to the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant, the Idaho National Laboratory

Idaho National Laboratory

Idaho National Laboratory is an complex located in the high desert of eastern Idaho, between the town of Arco to the west and the cities of Idaho Falls and Blackfoot to the east. It lies within Butte, Bingham, Bonneville and Jefferson counties...

, Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository proposal, the Hanford Site

Hanford Site

The Hanford Site is a mostly decommissioned nuclear production complex on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, operated by the United States federal government. The site has been known by many names, including Hanford Works, Hanford Engineer Works or HEW, Hanford Nuclear Reservation...

, the Nevada Test Site

Nevada Test Site

, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...

, and transportation of nuclear waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...

.

Some scientists and engineers have expressed reservations about nuclear power, including: Barry Commoner

Barry Commoner

Barry Commoner is an American biologist, college professor, and eco-socialist. He ran for president of the United States in the 1980 US presidential election on the Citizens Party ticket. He was also editor of Science Illustrated magazine.-Biography:Commoner was born in Brooklyn...

, S. David Freeman

S. David Freeman

S. David Freeman is an American engineer, attorney, and author, born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who has had many key roles in energy policy...

, John Gofman

John Gofman

John William Gofman was an American scientist and advocate. He was Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology at University of California at Berkeley. Some of his early work was on the Manhattan Project, and he shares patents on the fissionability of uranium-233 as well as on early processes...

, Arnold Gundersen

Arnold Gundersen

Arnold "Arnie" Gundersen is chief engineer of energy consulting company Fairewinds Associates and a former nuclear power industry executive, and who has questioned the safety of the Westinghouse AP1000, a proposed third-generation nuclear reactor. Gundersen has also expressed concerns about the...

, Mark Z. Jacobson

Mark Z. Jacobson

Mark Z. Jacobson is professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and director of the Atmosphere and Energy Program there...

, Amory Lovins

Amory Lovins

Amory Bloch Lovins is an American environmental scientist and writer, Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. He has worked in the field of energy policy and related areas for four decades...

, Arjun Makhijani

Arjun Makhijani

Arjun Makhijani is an electrical and nuclear engineer who is President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. Makhijani has written many books and reports analyzing the safety, economics, and efficiency of various energy sources...

, Gregory Minor

Gregory Minor

Gregory Charles Minor was one of three middle-management engineers who resigned from the General Electric nuclear reactor division in 1976 to protest against the use of nuclear power in the United States. A native of Fresno, California, Minor received an electrical engineering degree from the...

, M.V. Ramana

M.V. Ramana

M. V. Ramana is a physicist who works at the Nuclear Futures Laboratory and the Program on Science and Global Security, both at Princeton University, on the future of nuclear power in the context of climate change and nuclear disarmament...

, Joseph Romm and Benjamin K. Sovacool

Benjamin K. Sovacool

Benjamin K. Sovacool is a Visiting Associate Professor at Vermont Law School and founding Director of the Energy Justice Program at their Institute for Energy and Environment. He was formerly an Assistant Professor and Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore.Sovacool's research...

. Scientists who have opposed nuclear weapons include Linus Pauling

Linus Pauling

Linus Carl Pauling was an American chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author, and educator. He was one of the most influential chemists in history and ranks among the most important scientists of the 20th century...

, Eugene Rabinowitch

Eugene Rabinowitch

Eugene Rabinowitch was a Russian-born American biophysicist who is best known for his work in relation to nuclear weapons, especially as a co-author of the Franck Report and a co-founder in 1945 of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a global security and public policy magazine, which he edited...

, M.V. Ramana

M.V. Ramana

and Frank N. von Hippel

Frank N. von Hippel

Frank N. von Hippel, Professor and Co-Director, Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.-Positions held:...

Emergence of the anti-nuclear weapons movement

The nuclear debate initially was about nuclear weapons policy, and began within the scientific community. Scientific concern about the adverse health effects arising from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing first emerged in 1954. Professional associations such as the Federation of Atomic Scientists and the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs were involved. The National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy

Peace Action

Peace Action is a peace organization formed through the merger of The Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy and the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign...

was formed in November 1957, and surveys showed rising public uneasiness about the nuclear arms race

Nuclear arms race

The nuclear arms race was a competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War...

-- especially atmospheric nuclear weapons tests that sent radioactive fallout around the globe. In 1962, Linus Pauling

Linus Pauling

won the Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...

for his work to stop the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, and the "Ban the Bomb" movement spread throughout the United States.

Between 1945 and 1992, the United States maintained a program of vigorous nuclear weapons testing. A total of 1,054 nuclear tests and two nuclear attacks were conducted, with over 900 of them at the Nevada

Nevada

Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...

Test Site

Nevada Test Site

, and ten on miscellaneous sites in the United States (Alaska

Alaska

Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

, Colorado

Colorado

Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

, Mississippi

Mississippi

Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...

, and New Mexico

New Mexico

New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

). Until November 1962, the vast majority of the U.S. tests were above-ground; after the acceptance of the Partial Test Ban Treaty

Partial Test Ban Treaty

The treaty banning nuclear weapon tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water, often abbreviated as the Partial Test Ban Treaty , Limited Test Ban Treaty , or Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is a treaty prohibiting all test detonations of nuclear weapons...

all testing was relegated underground, in order to prevent the dispersion of nuclear fallout

Nuclear fallout

Fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and shock wave have passed. It commonly refers to the radioactive dust and ash created when a nuclear weapon explodes...

.

The U.S. program of atmospheric nuclear testing exposed some people to the hazards of fallout

Downwinders

Downwinders refers to individuals and communities who are exposed to radioactive contamination or nuclear fallout from atmospheric or underground nuclear weapons testing, and nuclear accidents...

. Since the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act

Radiation Exposure Compensation Act

The United States Radiation Exposure Compensation Act is a federal statute providing for the monetary compensation of people, including atomic veterans, who contracted cancer and a number of other specified diseases as a direct result of their exposure to atmospheric nuclear testing undertaken by...

of 1990, more than $1.38 billion in compensation has been approved. The money is going to people who took part in the tests, notably at the Nevada Test Site, and to others exposed to the radiation.

Emergence of the anti-nuclear power movement

Unexpectedly high costs in the nuclear weapons program created "pressure on federal officials to develop a civilian nuclear power industry that could help justify the government's considerable expenditures".

The Atomic Energy Act of 1954

Atomic Energy Act of 1954

The Atomic Energy Act of 1954, 42 U.S.C. § 2011 et seq., is a United States federal law that is, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "the fundamental U.S...

encouraged private corporations to build nuclear reactors and a significant learning phase followed with many early partial core meltdowns and accidents at experimental reactors and research facilities. This led to the introduction of the Price-Anderson Act in 1957, which was "an implicit admission that nuclear power provided risks that producers were unwilling to assume without federal backing". The Price-Anderson Act "shields nuclear utilities, vendors and suppliers against liability claims in the event of a catastrophic accident by imposing an upper limit on private sector liability". Without such protection, private companies were unwilling to be involved. No other technology in the history of American industry has enjoyed such continuing blanket protection.

The first U.S. reactor to face public opposition was Fermi 1

Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station

The Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station is a nuclear power plant on the shore of Lake Erie near Monroe, in Frenchtown Charter Township, Michigan. It is approximately halfway between Detroit, Michigan, and Toledo, Ohio. It is also visible from parts of Amherstburg, Ontario. Two units have been...

in 1957. It was built approximately 30 miles from Detroit and there was opposition from the United Auto Workers Union.

Pacific Gas & Electric planned to build the first commercially viable nuclear power plant

Nuclear power plant

A nuclear power plant is a thermal power station in which the heat source is one or more nuclear reactors. As in a conventional thermal power station the heat is used to generate steam which drives a steam turbine connected to a generator which produces electricity.Nuclear power plants are usually...

in the USA at Bodega Bay

Bodega Bay

Bodega Bay is a shallow, rocky inlet of the Pacific Ocean on the coast of northern California in the United States. It is approximately across and is located approximately northwest of San Francisco and west of Santa Rosa...

, north of San Francisco. The proposal was controversial and conflict with local citizens began in 1958. The proposed plant site was close to the San Andreas fault

San Andreas Fault

The San Andreas Fault is a continental strike-slip fault that runs a length of roughly through California in the United States. The fault's motion is right-lateral strike-slip...

and close to the region's environmentally sensitive fishing and dairy industries. The Sierra Club

Sierra Club

The Sierra Club is the oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the conservationist and preservationist John Muir, who became its first president...

became actively involved. The conflict ended in 1964, with the forced abandonment of plans for the power plant. Historian Thomas Wellock

Thomas Wellock

Thomas Wellock is the historian for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Trained as both an engineer and a historian, he writes scholarly histories of the regulation of commercial nuclear energy....

traces the birth of the anti-nuclear movement to the controversy over Bodega Bay. Attempts to build a nuclear power plant in Malibu were similar to those at Bodega Bay and were also abandoned.

Nuclear accidents continued into the 1960s with a small test reactor exploding at the Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One

SL-1

The SL-1, or Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One, was a United States Army experimental nuclear power reactor which underwent a steam explosion and meltdown on January 3, 1961, killing its three operators. The direct cause was the improper withdrawal of the central control rod, responsible for...

in Idaho Falls in January 1961 and a partial meltdown at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station

Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station

in Michigan in 1966.

In his 1963 book Change, Hope and the Bomb, David Lilienthal

David Lilienthal

David Eli Lilienthal was an American public official who served in many different governmental roles over the course of his career...

criticized nuclear developments, particularly the nuclear industry's failure to address the nuclear waste

High-level radioactive waste management

High-level radioactive waste management concerns management and disposal of highly radioactive materials created during production of nuclear power and nuclear warheads. The technical issues in accomplishing this are daunting, due to the extremely long periods radioactive wastes remain deadly to...

question. He argued that it would be "particularly irresponsible to go ahead with the construction of full scale nuclear power plants without a safe method of nuclear waste disposal having been demonstrated". However, Lilienthal stopped short of a blanket rejection of nuclear power. His view was that a more cautious approach was necessary.

Samuel Walker, in his book Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective, explains that the growth of the nuclear industry in the U.S. occurred as the environmental movement

Environmental movement

The environmental movement, a term that includes the conservation and green politics, is a diverse scientific, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues....

was being formed. Environmentalists saw the advantages of nuclear power in reducing air pollution, but became critical of nuclear technology on other grounds. The view that nuclear power was better for the environment than conventional fuels was partially undermined in the late 1960s when major controversy erupted over the effects of waste heat from nuclear plants on water quality. The nuclear industry "gradually and reluctantly took action to reduce thermal pollution by building cooling towers or ponds for plants on inland waterways".

Another concern was the effect of radiation emissions from nuclear plants. Several scientists, including John Gofman

John Gofman

and Arthur Tamplin, challenged the prevailing view that the small amounts of radiation released by nuclear power plants during normal operation were not a problem. They argued "that the routine releases were a severe threat to public health and could cause tens of thousands of deaths from cancer each year". Exchange of views about radiation risks caused uneasiness about nuclear power, especially among those unable to evaluate the conflicting claims.

Another issue was reactor safety. The large size of nuclear plants ordered during the late 1960s raised new safety questions and created fears of a severe reactor accident that would send large quantities of radiation into the environment. In the early 1970s, a highly contentious debate over the performance of emergency core cooling systems in nuclear plants, designed to prevent a core meltdown that could lead to the "China syndrome

China Syndrome

The term China syndrome describes a nuclear reactor operations accident characterized by the severe meltdown of the core components of the reactor, which then burn through the containment vessel and the housing building, then notionally through the crust and body of the Earth until reaching...

", received coverage in the popular media and technical journals. The emergency core cooling systems controversy opened up the question of whether the AECs first priority was promotion of the nuclear industry or protection of public health and safety.

By the early 1970s, anti-nuclear activity had increased dramatically in conjunction with concerns about nuclear safety and criticisms of a policy-making process that allowed little voice for these concerns. Initially scattered and organized at the local level, opposition to nuclear power became a national movement by the mid-1970s when such groups as the Sierra Club

Sierra Club

, Friends of the Earth

Friends of the Earth

Friends of the Earth International is an international network of environmental organizations in 76 countries.FOEI is assisted by a small secretariat which provides support for the network and its agreed major campaigns...

, Natural Resources Defense Council

Natural Resources Defense Council

The Natural Resources Defense Council is a New York City-based, non-profit, non-partisan international environmental advocacy group, with offices in Washington DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Beijing...

, Union of Concerned Scientists

Union of Concerned Scientists

The Union of Concerned Scientists is a nonprofit science advocacy group based in the United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. James J...

, and Critical Mass

Critical Mass (Anti-nuclear group)

The Critical Mass Energy Project was formed by Ralph Nader in 1974 as a national anti-nuclear umbrella group. It was probably the largest national anti-nuclear group in the United States, with several hundred local affiliates and an estimated 200,000 supporters...

became involved. With the rise of environmentalism in the 1970s, the anti-nuclear movement grew substantially:

In 1975-76, ballot initiatives to control or halt the growth of nuclear power were introduced in eight western states. Although they enjoyed little success at the polls, the controls they sought to impose were sometimes adopted in part by state legislature, most notably in California. Interventions in plant licensing proceedings increased, often focusing on technical issues related to safety. This widespread popular ferment kept the issue before the public and contributed to growing public skepticism about nuclear power.

Another major area of on-going concern was nuclear waste management

High-level radioactive waste management

. The absence of a working waste management facility became an important issue by the mid-1970s:

In 1976, the California Energy Commission
California Energy Commission
The California Energy Commission is California’s primary energy policy and planning agency. Created in 1974 and headquartered in Sacramento, the Commission has responsibility for activities that include forecasting future energy needs, promoting energy efficiency through appliance and building...

announced that it would not approve any more nuclear plants unless the utilities could specify fuel and waste disposal costs, an impossible task without decision on reprocessing, spent fuel storage and waste disposal. By the late 1970s, over thirty states had passed legislation regulating various activities associated with nuclear waste.

Many technologies and materials associated with the creation of a nuclear power program have a dual-use capability, in that they can be used to make nuclear weapons if a country chooses to do so. In 1975 over 2,000 prominent scientists signed a Declaration on Nuclear Power, prepared by the Union of Concerned Scientists

Union of Concerned Scientists

, warning of the dangers of nuclear proliferation

Nuclear proliferation

Nuclear proliferation is a term now used to describe the spread of nuclear weapons, fissile material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information, to nations which are not recognized as "Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also known as the...

and urging the President and Congress to suspend the exportation of nuclear power to other countries, and reduce domestic construction until major problems were resolved. Theodore Taylor, a former nuclear weapons designer, explained "the ease with which nuclear bombs could be manufactured if fissionable material was available".

In 1976, four nuclear engineers

Nuclear power whistleblowers

The GE Three are three nuclear engineers who "blew the whistle" on safety problems at nuclear power plants in the United States in 1976. The three nuclear engineers gained the attention of journalists and the anti-nuclear movement. The GE Three returned to prominence in 2011 during the Fukushima...

-- three from GE and one from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—resigned, stating that nuclear power was not as safe as their superiors were claiming. These men were engineers who had spent most of their working life building reactors, and their defection galvanized anti-nuclear groups across the country. They testified to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy that:

"the cumulative effect of all design defects and deficiencies in the design, construction and operations of nuclear power plants makes a nuclear power plant accident, in our opinion, a certain event. The only question is when, and where.

These issues, together with a series of other environmental, technical, and public health questions, made nuclear power the source of acute controversy. Public support, which was strong in the early 1960s, had been shaken. Forbes, in the September 1975 issue, reported that "the anti-nuclear coalition has been remarkably successful ... [and] has certainly slowed the expansion of nuclear power." By the mid-1970s anti-nuclear activism, fueled by dissenting experts, had moved beyond local protests and politics to gain a wider appeal and influence. Although it lacked a single co-ordinating organization, and did not have uniform goals, it emerged as a movement sharply focused on opposing nuclear power, and the movement's efforts gained a great deal of national attention.

On March 28, 1979, equipment failures and operator error contributed to loss of coolant and a partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant

Three Mile Island accident

The Three Mile Island accident was a core meltdown in Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania near Harrisburg, United States in 1979....

in Pennsylvania. The World Nuclear Association has stated that cleanup of the damaged nuclear reactor system at TMI-2 took nearly 12 years and cost approximately US $973 million. Benjamin K. Sovacool

Benjamin K. Sovacool

, in his 2007 preliminary assessment of major energy accidents, estimated that the TMI accident caused a total of $2.4 billion in property damages. The health effects of the Three Mile Island accident

Three Mile Island accident health effects

The health effects of the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident are widely, but not universally, agreed to be very low level. According to the official radiation release figures, average local radiation exposure was equivalent to a chest X-ray, and maximum local exposure equivalent to less than a...

are widely, but not universally, agreed to be very low level. The accident triggered protests around the world.

Complexity of nuclear power

Nuclear power plants are a complex energy system. and opponents of nuclear power have criticized the sophistication and complexity of the technology. Helen Caldicott

Helen Caldicott

Helen Mary Caldicott is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate who has founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation, war and military action in general. She hosts a...

has said: "... in essence, a nuclear reactor is just a very sophisticated and dangerous way to boil water -- analogous to cutting a pound of butter with a chain saw." These critics of nuclear power advocate the use of energy conservation

Energy conservation

Energy conservation refers to efforts made to reduce energy consumption. Energy conservation can be achieved through increased efficient energy use, in conjunction with decreased energy consumption and/or reduced consumption from conventional energy sources...

, efficient energy use

Efficient energy use

Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the goal of efforts to reduce the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, insulating a home allows a building to use less heating and cooling energy to achieve and maintain a comfortable temperature...

, and appropriate renewable energy

Renewable energy

Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...

technologies to create our energy future.

Amory Lovins

Amory Lovins

, from the Rocky Mountain Institute

Rocky Mountain Institute

Rocky Mountain Institute is an organization in the United States dedicated to research, publication, consulting, and lecturing in the general field of sustainability, with a special focus on profitable innovations for energy and resource efficiency. RMI was established in 1982 and has grown into a...

, has argued that centralized electricity systems with giant power plants are becoming obsolete. In their place are emerging "distributed resources"—smaller, decentralized electricity supply sources (including efficiency) that are cheaper, cleaner, less risky, more flexible, and quicker to deploy. Such technologies are often called "soft energy technologies" and Lovins viewed their impacts as more gentle, pleasant, and manageable than hard energy technologies such as nuclear power.

Nuclear energy systems have a long stay time. The completion of the sequence of activities related to one commercial nuclear power station, from the start of construction through the safe disposal of its last radioactive waste, may take 100–150 years.

Anti-nuclear protests

On November 1, 1961, at the height of the Cold War

Cold War

, about 50,000 women brought together by Women Strike for Peace

Women Strike for Peace

Women Strike for Peace is a United States women's peace activist group.-History:Women Strike for Peace was founded by Bella Abzug and Dagmar Wilson in 1961, and was initially part of the movement for a ban on nuclear testing and to end the Vietnam war, first demanding a negotiated settlement,...

marched in 60 cities in the United States to demonstrate against nuclear weapons. It was the largest national women's peace protest of the 20th century.

On June 12, 1982, one million people demonstrated in New York City's Central Park

Central Park

against nuclear weapons and for an end to the cold war arms race

Arms race

. It was the largest anti-nuclear protest

Demonstration (people)

and the largest political demonstration in American history.

Marco Giugni, in his book Social Protest and Policy Change, explains that several anti-nuclear power campaigns captured national public attention in the 1970s and 1980s. These involved the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant

Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant

The Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant located on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay near Lusby, Calvert County, Maryland.-Overview:...

, Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant

Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant

, Diablo Canyon Power Plant

Diablo Canyon Power Plant

, Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant

Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant

The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was a completed General Electric nuclear boiling water reactor located adjacent to the Wading River in East Shoreham, New York...

, and Three Mile Island. Specific protests have included:

May 2, 1977: 1,414 protesters were arrested at the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire.
June 1978: some 12,000 people attended a protest at Seabrook.
August 1978: almost 500 people were arrested for protesting at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant
Diablo Canyon Power Plant
Diablo Canyon Power Plant is an electricity-generating nuclear power plant at Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, California. The plant has two Westinghouse-designed 4-loop pressurized-water nuclear reactors operated by Pacific Gas & Electric. The facility is located on about in Avila Beach,...

in California.
March 28, 1979: The Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, began undergoing what would become the most famous nuclear accident in U.S. history. The accident triggered protests around the world and enhanced the credibility of anti-nuclear groups, who predicted an accident.
April 8, 1979: 30,000 people marched in San Francisco to support shutting down the Diablo Canyon Power Plant
Diablo Canyon Power Plant
Diablo Canyon Power Plant is an electricity-generating nuclear power plant at Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, California. The plant has two Westinghouse-designed 4-loop pressurized-water nuclear reactors operated by Pacific Gas & Electric. The facility is located on about in Avila Beach,...

.
May 6, 1979: an estimated 70,000 people, including the governor of California, attended a march and rally against nuclear power in Washington, D.C.
June 2, 1979: about 500 people were arrested for protesting construction of the Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant in Oklahoma.
June 3, 1979: some 15,000 people attended a rally at the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island, New York, and about 600 were arrested.
June 30, 1979: about 38,000 people attended a protest rally at Diablo Canyon.
1979: Abalone Alliance
Abalone alliance
The Abalone Alliance was a nonviolent civil disobedience group formed to shut down the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo on the central California coast in the United States...

members held a 38-day sit-in at Californian Governor Jerry Brown
Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown, Jr. is an American politician. Brown served as the 34th Governor of California , and is currently serving as the 39th California Governor...

's office to protest continued operation of Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station
Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station
The Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station is a decommissioned nuclear power plant built by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District in Herald, California.-History:...

, which was a duplicate of the Three Mile Island
Three Mile Island accident
The Three Mile Island accident was a core meltdown in Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania near Harrisburg, United States in 1979....

facility. In 1989, Sacramento voters voted to shut down the Rancho Seco power plant.
September 23, 1979: Almost 200,000 people attended the nation's largest antinuclear rally to date, staged on the then-empty north end of the Battery Park City landfill
Landfill
A landfill site , is a site for the disposal of waste materials by burial and is the oldest form of waste treatment...

in New York City. The New York rally was held in conjunction with a series of nightly “No Nukes” concerts
No Nukes (album)
No Nukes: The Muse Concerts For a Non-Nuclear Future was a 1979 triple live album that contained selections from the September 1979 Madison Square Garden concerts by the Musicians United for Safe Energy collective, with Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, and John Hall being the key...

given at Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...

from September 19 through 23 by Musicians United for Safe Energy
Musicians United for Safe Energy
Musicians United for Safe Energy, or MUSE, is an activist group founded in 1979 by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, and John Hall. The group advocates against the use of nuclear energy, forming shortly after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in March 1979...

.
June 22, 1980: about 15,000 people attended a protest near the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station
San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station
The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is a nuclear power plant located on the Pacific coast of California. The site is in the northwestern corner of San Diego County, south of San Clemente, and surrounded by the San Onofre State Park and next to the I-5 Highway.Unit 1 is no longer in service...

in California.
September 1981: more than 900 protesters were arrested at Diablo Canyon.
May 1984: about 130 demonstrators showed up for start-up day at Diablo Canyon, and five were arrested.
1986: Hundreds of people walked from Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

to Washington DC in what is referred to as the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament
Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament
The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, Inc. was a cross-country event in 1986 aimed at raising awareness to the growing danger of nuclear proliferation and to advocate for complete, verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons from the earth...

; the march took nine months.
February 6, 1987: More than 400 people were arrested at the Nevada Test Site
Nevada Test Site
The Nevada National Security Site , previously the Nevada Test Site , is a United States Department of Energy reservation located in southeastern Nye County, Nevada, about northwest of the city of Las Vegas...

, when nearly 2,000 demonstrators, including six members of Congress, held a rally to protest nuclear weapons testing.
June 5, 1989: hundreds of demonstrators at Seabrook Station nuclear power plant protested against the plant's first low-power testing, and the police arrested 627 people for trespassing.
April 20, 1992: 493 anti-nuclear protesters were arrested on misdemeanor charges, as demonstrators clashed with guards at an annual Easter demonstration against weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site.
May 1, 2005: Anti-nuclear/anti-war march past the UN in New York, 60 years after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
October 16, 2006: 26 people were arrested outside the Brattleboro offices of Vermont Yankee owner Entergy Nuclear; the demonstration drew about 200 people.
April 2009: About 150 activists marched against the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant and to urge lawmakers to back development of clean energy sources such as wind power
Wind power
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form of energy, such as using wind turbines to make electricity, windmills for mechanical power, windpumps for water pumping or drainage, or sails to propel ships....

and solar power
Solar power
Solar energy, radiant light and heat from the sun, has been harnessed by humans since ancient times using a range of ever-evolving technologies. Solar radiation, along with secondary solar-powered resources such as wind and wave power, hydroelectricity and biomass, account for most of the available...

; the marchers had gathered 12,000 signatures in support of closing Vermont Yankee.
November 2, 2009: Five protesters, including Jesuit Priest William J. Bichsel, S.J.
William J. Bichsel, S.J.
William J. Bichsel, S.J. is Jesuit Priest in Tacoma, Washington, United States. He is notable for his actions as a non-violent protester, spending time in federal prison for demonstrating on issues such as Nuclear Weapons, and the School of the Americas.-Biography:Bill Bichsel was born in 1929,...

were arrested for breaking through two levels of security to protest the nuclear weapons stored at Naval Base Kitsap
Naval Base Kitsap
Naval Base Kitsap is a U.S. Navy base located on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington state. It was created in 2004 by merging the former Naval Station Bremerton with Naval Submarine Base Bangor...

. The protesters walked to a bunker where the weapons were stored and spilled blood, hung posters and prayed.
May 2010: some 25,000 people, including members of peace organizations and 1945 atomic bomb survivors, marched from downtown New York to the United Nations headquarters, calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

There is an annual protest against U.S. nuclear weapons research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...

in California and in the 2007 protest, 64 people were arrested. There have been a series of protests at the Nevada Test Site

Nevada Test Site

and in the April 2007 Nevada Desert Experience

Nevada Desert Experience

protest, 39 people were cited by police. There have been anti-nuclear protests at Naval Base Kitsap

Naval Base Kitsap

Naval Base Kitsap is a U.S. Navy base located on the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington state. It was created in 2004 by merging the former Naval Station Bremerton with Naval Submarine Base Bangor...

for many years, and several in 2008. Also in 2008 and 2009, there have been protests about several proposed nuclear reactors.

In the 1980s, when fewer nuclear power plants remained in the construction and licensing pipeline, and interest in energy policy as a national issue declined, many anti-nuclear activists switched their focus to nuclear weapons and the arms race. There has also been an institutionalization of the anti-nuclear movement, where the anti-nuclear movement carried its contests into less visible, and more specialized institutional areas, such as regulatory and licensing hearings, and legal challenges. At the state level, anti-nuclear groups were also successful in placing several anti-nuclear referendums on the ballot.

Specific groups

Anti-nuclear organizations are those which oppose nuclear power or nuclear weapons, or both. More than eighty anti-nuclear groups are operating, or have operated, in the United States. These include:

Abalone Alliance
Abalone alliance
The Abalone Alliance was a nonviolent civil disobedience group formed to shut down the Pacific Gas and Electric Company's Diablo Canyon Power Plant near San Luis Obispo on the central California coast in the United States...
Clamshell Alliance
Clamshell Alliance
The Clamshell Alliance is an anti-nuclear organization co-founded by Paul Gunter, Howie Hawkins, Harvey Wasserman, Guy Chichester and other activists in 1976. The alliance's coalescence began in 1975 as New England activists and organizations began to respond to U.S...
Committee for Nuclear Responsibility
Committee for Nuclear Responsibility
The Committee for Nuclear Responsibility was formed as a "political and educational organization to disseminate anti-nuclear views and information to the public"...
Corporate Accountability International
Corporate Accountability International
Corporate Accountability International is a non-profit organization, founded in 1977. Their campaign headquarters are in Boston, Massachusetts and they have offices in Oakland, California, Seattle, Washington, and Bogotá, Colombia...
Critical Mass
Critical Mass (Anti-nuclear group)
The Critical Mass Energy Project was formed by Ralph Nader in 1974 as a national anti-nuclear umbrella group. It was probably the largest national anti-nuclear group in the United States, with several hundred local affiliates and an estimated 200,000 supporters...
Friends of the Earth
Friends of the Earth
Friends of the Earth International is an international network of environmental organizations in 76 countries.FOEI is assisted by a small secretariat which provides support for the network and its agreed major campaigns...
Greenpeace USA
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research focuses on the environmental safety of nuclear weapons production, ozone layer depletion, and other issues relating to energy. IEER publishes a variety of books on energy-related issues, conducts workshops for activists on nuclear issues, and...
Mothers for Peace
Musicians United for Safe Energy
Musicians United for Safe Energy
Musicians United for Safe Energy, or MUSE, is an activist group founded in 1979 by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, and John Hall. The group advocates against the use of nuclear energy, forming shortly after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in March 1979...
Nevada Desert Experience
Nevada Desert Experience
The Nevada Desert Experience is a name for the movement to stop U.S. nuclear weapons testing that came into use in the middle 1980s. It is also the name of a particular anti-nuclear organization which continues to create public events to question the morality and intelligence of the U.S. nuclear...

No Nukes group

Nuclear Control Institute

The Nuclear Control Institute is a research and advocacy center for preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. The non-profit organization was founded by Paul Leventhal in 1981. It went under a reorganization in 2003 to make it a web-based program...

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Physicians for Social Responsibility

Plowshares Movement

The Plowshares Movement is an anti-nuclear weapons movement that gained notoriety in the early 1980s when several members damaged government property and were subsequently convicted.-History:...

Public Citizen

Public Citizen is a non-profit, consumer rights advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., United States, with a branch in Austin, Texas. Public Citizen was founded by Ralph Nader in 1971, headed for 26 years by Joan Claybrook, and is now headed by Robert Weissman.-Lobbying Efforts:Public Citizen...

Shad Alliance

The Shad Alliance was an active and influential anti-nuclear group which used non-violent, direct action methods in the late 1970s and 1980s. It grew out of the "alliance movement" started in New Hampshire by the Clamshell Alliance...

Sierra Club

Three Mile Island Alert

Women Strike for Peace

Many religious groups in America have a strong record of opposing nuclear weapons. Rejecting the development, deployment and use of nuclear weapons is "one of the most widely shared convictions across faith traditions". In the 1980s religious groups organized anti-nuclear marches involving hundreds of thousands of people, and the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish communities published explicitly anti-nuclear statements. Specific groups involved included the American Catholic Bishops, the Southern Baptist Convention

Southern Baptist Convention

The Southern Baptist Convention is a United States-based Christian denomination. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the United States, with over 16 million members...

and the Episcopal Church

Episcopal Church (United States)

The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States , but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe...

. Muslims also began to speak out against nuclear weapons in 2000.

The platform adopted by the delegates of the Green Party (United States)

Green Party (United States)

The Green Party of the United States is a nationally recognized political party which officially formed in 1991. It is a voluntary association of state green parties. Prior to national formation, many state affiliates had already formed and were recognized by other state parties...

at their annual Green Congress May 26–28, 2000, reflecting the majority views of the membership, included the creation of self-reproducing, renewable energy

Renewable energy

systems and use of federal investments, purchasing, mandates, and incentives to shut down nuclear power plants and phase out fossil fuels.

Recent campaigning by anti-nuclear groups has related to several nuclear power plants including the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant, Indian Point Energy Center

Indian Point Energy Center

, Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station

Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station

, Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station

Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station

, Salem Nuclear Power Plant

Salem Nuclear Power Plant

, and Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant

Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant

. There have also been campaigns relating to the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant, the Idaho National Laboratory

Idaho National Laboratory

, proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, the Hanford Site

Hanford Site

, the Nevada Test Site

Nevada Test Site

, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...

, and transportation of nuclear waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...

Al Gore

Former vice president Al Gore

Al Gore

Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....

says he is not anti-nuclear, but has stated that the "cost of the present generation of reactors is nearly prohibitive". In his 2009 book, Our Choice, Gore argues that nuclear power was once "expected to provide virtually unlimited supplies of low-cost electricity", but the reality is that it has been "an energy source in crisis for the last 30 years". Worldwide growth in nuclear power has slowed in recent years, with no new reactors and an "actual decline in global capacity and output in 2008". In the United States, "no nuclear power plants ordered after 1972 have been built to completion".

Of the 253 nuclear power reactors originally ordered in the United States from 1953 to 2008, 48 percent were canceled, 11 percent were prematurely shut down, 14 percent experienced at least a one-year-or-more outage, and 27 percent are operating without having a year-plus outage. Thus, only about one fourth of those ordered, or about half of those completed, are still operating and have proved relatively reliable.

Amory Lovins

In his 2005 book Winning the Oil Endgame
Winning the Oil Endgame
Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profits, Jobs and Security is a 2005 book by Amory B. Lovins, E. Kyle Datta, Odd-Even Bustnes, Jonathan G. Koomey, and Nathan J. Glasgow, published by the Rocky Mountain Institute...

, Amory Lovins

Amory Lovins

praises nuclear power engineers, but is critical of the nuclear industry:

No vendor has made money selling power reactors. This is the greatest failure of any enterprise in the industrial history of the world. We don’t mean that as a criticism of nuclear power’s practitioners, on whose skill and devotion we all continue to depend; the impressive operational improvements in U.S. power reactors in recent years deserve great credit. It is simply how technologies and markets evolved, despite the best intentions and immense effort. In nuclear power’s heydey, its proponents saw no competitors but central coal-fired power stations. Then, in quick succession, came end-use efficiency, combined-cycle plants, distributed generation (including versions that recovered valuable heat previously wasted), and competitive windpower. The range of competitors will only continue to expand more and their costs to fall faster than any nuclear technology can match.

In 1988, Lovins argued that improving energy efficiency can simultaneously ameliorate greenhouse warming, reduce acid rain

Acid rain

Acid rain is a rain or any other form of precipitation that is unusually acidic, meaning that it possesses elevated levels of hydrogen ions . It can have harmful effects on plants, aquatic animals, and infrastructure. Acid rain is caused by emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen...

and air pollution

Air pollution

Air pollution is the introduction of chemicals, particulate matter, or biological materials that cause harm or discomfort to humans or other living organisms, or cause damage to the natural environment or built environment, into the atmosphere....

, save money, and avoid the problems of nuclear power. Given the urgency of abating global warming, Lovins stated that we cannot afford to invest in nuclear power when those same dollars put into efficiency would displace far more carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...

.

In “Nuclear Power: Climate Fix or Folly,” published in 2010, Lovins argued that expanded nuclear power "does not represent a cost-effective solution to global warming and that investors would shun it were it not for generous government subsidies lubricated by intensive lobbying efforts".

Joseph Romm

Joseph Romm contends that nuclear power generates about 20 percent of all U.S. electricity, and because it is a low-carbon source of around-the-clock power, it has received renewed interest in recent years. Yet, Romm argues, nuclear power’s "own myriad limitations will constrain its growth, especially in the near term", and the limitations include:

Prohibitively high, and escalating, capital costs.
Production bottlenecks in key components needed to build plants.
Very long construction times.
Concerns about uranium supplies and importation issues.
Unresolved problems with the availability and security of radioactive waste storage which has a 100,000 year shelf life.
Large-scale water use and contamination amid shortages.
High electricity prices from new plants.

Lester Brown

Lester Brown argues that nuclear power is simply not economical, and that installed nuclear capacity will probably remain much the same for the foreseeable future:

Our assumption is that new openings of nuclear power plants worldwide will simply offset the closing of aging plants, with no overall growth in capacity. If we use full-cost pricing—requiring utilities to absorb the costs of disposing of nuclear waste, of decommissioning the plant when it is worn out, and of insuring the reactors against possible accidents and terrorist attacks—building nuclear plants in a competitive electricity market is simply not economical.

Brown states that simple measures, such as changing to more efficient lighting, can lead to significant reductions in energy consumption.

Christopher Flavin

Many advocates of nuclear power argue that, given the urgency of doing something about climate change quickly, it must be pursued. Christopher Flavin

Christopher Flavin

Christopher Flavin is the President of the Worldwatch Institute, an independent research organization focused on natural resource and environmental issues, based in Washington, DC...

, however, contends that speedy implementation is not one of nuclear power’s strong points:

Planning, licensing, and constructing even a single nuclear plant typically takes a decade or more, and plants frequently fail to meet completion deadlines. Due to the dearth of orders in recent decades, the world currently has very limited capacity to manufacture many of the critical components of nuclear plants. Rebuilding that capacity will take a decade or more.

Given the urgency of the climate problem, Flavin emphasizes the rapid commercialization of renewable energy

Renewable energy commercialization

Renewable energy commercialization involves the deployment of three generations of renewable energy technologies dating back more than 100 years. First-generation technologies, which are already mature and economically competitive, include biomass, hydroelectricity, geothermal power and heat...

and efficient energy use

Efficient energy use

Improved energy productivity and renewable energy are both available in abundance—and new policies and technologies are rapidly making them more economically competitive with fossil fuels. In combination, these energy options represent the most robust alternative to the current energy system, capable of providing the diverse array of energy services that a modern economy requires. Given the urgency of the climate problem, that is indeed convenient.

Other people

Other notable individuals who have expressed reservations about nuclear power or nuclear weapons, or both, in the US include:

Edward Asner
Norma Becker
Norma Becker
Norma Becker was a founder of the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, which drew tens of thousands to protest the Vietnam War, and of the Mobilization for Survival coalition. She served as chairperson of the pacifist War Resisters League from 1977 to 1983.Born in the Bronx in 1930, Becker...
Shelley Berkley
Shelley Berkley
Rochelle "Shelley" Berkley is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1999, and a candidate for U.S. Senate. She is a member of the Democratic Party.-Early life, education, and legal career:...
Daniel Berrigan
Daniel Berrigan
Daniel Berrigan, SJ is an American Catholic priest, peace activist, and poet. Daniel and his brother Philip were for a time on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for their involvement in antiwar protests during the Vietnam war....
Philip Berrigan
Philip Berrigan
Philip Francis Berrigan was an internationally renowned American peace activist, Christian anarchist and former Roman Catholic priest...
Rosalie Bertell
Rosalie Bertell
Rosalie Bertell is an American physician and epidemiologist best known for her work in the field of ionizing radiation. A dual citizen of Canada and the United States, she has worked in environmental health since 1970....
Larry Bogart
Larry Bogart
Larry Bogart was a U.S. independent critic of the nuclear power industry. Bogart abandoned a career in public relations in the mid-1960s to organize community groups and speak out about the problems of the "peaceful atom"....
Peter A. Bradford
Peter A. Bradford
Peter A. Bradford is a former member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and former chair of the Maine and New York utility commissions. He teaches energy policy and law at the Vermont Law School and has taught at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies...
Dale Bridenbaugh
Nuclear power whistleblowers
The GE Three are three nuclear engineers who "blew the whistle" on safety problems at nuclear power plants in the United States in 1976. The three nuclear engineers gained the attention of journalists and the anti-nuclear movement. The GE Three returned to prominence in 2011 during the Fukushima...
David Brower
Gerald W. Brown
Gerald W. Brown
Gerald W. "Jerry" Brown is an American whistleblower who concerned himself with deficiencies in passive fire protection systems in US and Canadian nuclear power plants.-Thermo-Lag scandal:...
Jackson Browne
Jackson Browne
Jackson Browne is an American singer-songwriter and musician who has sold over 17 million albums in the United States alone....
Helen Caldicott
Helen Caldicott
Helen Mary Caldicott is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate who has founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation, war and military action in general. She hosts a...
Paxus Calta
Paxus Calta
Paxus Calta, born Earl Schuyler Flansburgh, is a Czech born, American political activist, communitarian and writer. He has been involved with the anti-nuclear movement and is a member of the Twin Oaks Community.-Biography:...
Glenn Carroll
Glenn Carroll
Glenn Carroll has used a mix of art and activism to fight against nuclear proliferation for over two decades. After the Chernobyl disaster, Carroll joined Georgians Against Nuclear Energy, where she has contributed illustrations to educate the public about nuclear issues, testified at public...
Paul K. Chappell
Paul K. Chappell
Paul K. Chappell is an Iraq War veteran, and Peace Leadership Director for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.He graduated from West Point in 2002....
Myron Cherry
Guy Chichester
Guy Chichester
Guy Chichester was a founding member of the Clamshell Alliance, an anti-nuclear group that led protests against Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant in the 1970s, which led to a broader environmental movement. Though the Seabrook power plant was eventually built, a planned second reactor at the...
Tom Clements
Tom Clements (politician)
Tom Clements is a South Carolina environmental activist and politician. Clements was the Green Party's nominee in the 2010 United States Senate election in South Carolina. Clements received more than 9% of the general election. He is the Southeastern Nuclear Campaign Coordinator for the US branch...
William Sloane Coffin
William Sloane Coffin
William Sloane Coffin, Jr. was an American liberal Christian clergyman and long-time peace activist. He was ordained in the Presbyterian church and later received ministerial standing in the United Church of Christ....
David Comey
Barry Commoner
Barry Commoner
Barry Commoner is an American biologist, college professor, and eco-socialist. He ran for president of the United States in the 1980 US presidential election on the Citizens Party ticket. He was also editor of Science Illustrated magazine.-Biography:Commoner was born in Brooklyn...
Frances Crowe
Frances Crowe
Frances Crowe is an American peace activist and pacifist from the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts.-Early life:Crowe was born in Carthage, Missouri. She holds degrees from Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri and Syracuse University , and conducted graduate work at Columbia University...
Carrie Barefoot Dickerson
Carrie Barefoot Dickerson
Carrie Barefoot Dickerson was an American activist who led citizen efforts to stop construction of the proposed Black Fox Nuclear Power Plant in Oklahoma....
Ralph DiGia
Ralph DiGia
Ralph DiGia was a World War II conscientious objector, lifelong pacifist and social justice activist, and staffer for 52 years at the War Resisters League....

Michael Douglas

Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...

Eric Epstein

Eric Epstein is a former teacher, college professor, state Senate candidate, self-employed consultant, government reform activist, radio host and nuclear watchdog from Pennsylvania.-2004 Senate Election:...

Samuel Epstein

Samuel S. Epstein is a medical doctor, and currently professor emeritus of environmental and occupational health at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health...

Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an...

S. David Freeman

S. David Freeman is an American engineer, attorney, and author, born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who has had many key roles in energy policy...

Noel Gayler

Noel Arthur Meredyth Gayler was an Admiral in the United States Navy, who served as the sixth Director of the National Security Agency from 1969 to 1972, and ninth Commander of Pacific Command from 1972 to 1976. Gayler was awarded three Navy Cross medals as a World War II flying ace and is credited...

John Gofman

Jay M. Gould

Jay Martin Gould, who died in September 2005, was a statistician and epidemiologist who founded the Radiation and Public Health Project in 1985. It was Dr. Gould's contention that radiation from nuclear power plants was causing high rates of cancer in surrounding neighborhoods. For more than two...

Karl Grossman

Karl Grossman is a full professor of journalism at the State University of New York College at Old Westbury. For more than 45 years he has pioneered the combination of investigative reporting and environmental journalism in a variety of media...

Ed Grothus

Edward B. Grothus was a machinist/technician and employee of the Los Alamos National Laboratory during the 1950s and 1960s...

Paul Gunter

Paul Gunter is a co-founder of the Clamshell Alliance anti-nuclear group, who was arrested at Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant for non-violent civil disobedience on several occasions. An energy policy analyst and activist, he has been a vocal critic of nuclear power for more than 30 years...

John Hall

Corbin Harney

Corbin Harney was an elder and spiritual leader of the Newe people. Harney reportedly inspired the creation in 1994 of the Shundahai Network, which works for environmental justice and the abolition of nuclear weapons...

Howie Hawkins

Howie Hawkins is an American politician and activist with the Green Party of the United States and Socialist Party USA. He co-founded the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance in 1976 and the Green Party in the United States in 1984. He was New York's Green Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in the...

Carl Hocevar

Richard Hubbard

Nuclear power whistleblowers

Mark Z. Jacobson

Mark Z. Jacobson is professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and director of the Atmosphere and Energy Program there...

Stephen Kelly

Stephen Kelly (SJ)

Fr. Stephen Kelly, SJ is a priest of the Society of Jesus who worked with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Central America for many years.He is an activist, has participated in a number of Plowshares Movement protests and is a war-tax resister....

Dennis Kucinich

Dennis John Kucinich is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1997. He was furthermore a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections....

Sam Lovejoy

Montague Nuclear Power Plant

The Montague Nuclear Power Plant was to consist of two 1,150-megawatt nuclear reactors to be located in Montague, Massachusetts. The project was proposed in 1973 and canceled in 1980, after $29 million was spent on the project....

Rachel MacNair

Rachel M. MacNair is an American sociologist and psychologist who holds a consistent life ethic, and works against killing. A Quaker, she is an activist against abortion and war. She has written against the culture of violence and the eating of meat...

Arjun Makhijani

Thomas Mancuso

Gregory Minor

Carl Z. Morgan

Howard Morland

Howard Morland is a United States journalist and activist against nuclear weapons who in 1979 became famous for apparently discovering the "secret" of the hydrogen bomb and publishing it after a lengthy censorship attempt by the Department of Energy...

Macy Morse

Macy Morse is an American non-violent peace activist, and anti-nuclear activist.-History and background:Macy Elkins was born in Molalla, Oregon, a Pacific Northwest logging town...

Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader is an American political activist, as well as an author, lecturer, and attorney. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and democratic government....

Graham Nash

Graham William Nash, OBE is an English singer-songwriter known for his light tenor vocals and for his songwriting contributions with the British pop group The Hollies, and with the folk-rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Nash is a photography collector and a published photographer...

Holly Near

Holly Near is an American singer-songwriter, actress, teacher, and activist for social change.-Early years:...

Sam Nunn

Samuel Augustus Nunn, Jr. is an American lawyer and politician. Currently the co-chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative , a charitable organization working to reduce the global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, Nunn served for 24 years as a...

Grace Paley

Grace Paley was an American-Jewish short story writer, poet, and political activist.-Biography:Grace Paley was born in the Bronx to Isaac and Manya Ridnyik Goodside, who anglicized the family name from Gutseit on immigrating from Ukraine. Her father was a doctor. The family spoke Russian and...

Manuel Pino

Manuel Pino is a professor at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona, who comes from a village of the Tewa people west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Opposition to uranium mining has played a central role in Pino's life. The theme for his sociology dissertation was The Destructive Impact of Uranium...

William Perry

William James Perry is an American businessman and engineer who was the United States Secretary of Defense from February 3, 1994, to January 23, 1997, under President Bill Clinton...

Robert Pollard

Eugene Rabinowitch

Bonnie Raitt

Bonnie Lynn Raitt is an American blues singer-songwriter and a renowned slide guitar player. During the 1970s, Raitt released a series of acclaimed roots-influenced albums which incorporated elements of blues, rock, folk and country, but she is perhaps best known for her more commercially...

M.V. Ramana

Anthony Roisman

Susan Sarandon

Susan Sarandon is an American actress. She has worked in films and television since 1969, and won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the 1995 film Dead Man Walking. She had also been nominated for the award for four films before that and has received other recognition for her...

Martin Sheen

Ramón Gerardo Antonio Estévez , better known by his stage name Martin Sheen, is an American film actor best known for his performances in the films Badlands and Apocalypse Now , and in the television series The West Wing from 1999 to 2006.He is considered one of the best actors never to be...

Peter Shumlin

Karen Silkwood

Karen Gay Silkwood was an American labor union activist and chemical technician at the Kerr-McGee plant near Crescent, Oklahoma, United States. Silkwood's job was making plutonium pellets for nuclear reactor fuel rods...

Mary P. Sinclair

Mary P. Sinclair was an American environmental activist and "one of the nation’s foremost lay authorities on nuclear energy and its impact on the natural and human environment".-Early life:...

Norman Solomon

Norman Solomon is an American journalist, media critic, antiwar activist, and current candidate for the United States House of Representatives. Solomon is a longtime associate of the media watch group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting...

Ernest Sternglass

Arthur R. Tamplin

Ellen Thomas

Ellen Thomas is an American activist who has been the primary support person for the vigil in front of the White House against nuclear weapons for over a decade. She first became involved with the vigil on April 13, 1984. The daughter of a U.S. Marine, Thomas grew up in California and became...

Louie Vitale

Fr. Louis Vitale, OFM, is a Franciscan priest, activist, and a co-founder of Nevada Desert Experience. He has engaged in civil disobedience for nearly four decades in pursuit of peace and justice, and has been arrested more than 200 times. Vitale says that St...

George Wald

Harvey Wasserman

Harvey Franklin Wasserman is an American journalist, author, democracy activist, and advocate for renewable energy. He has been a strategist and organizer in the anti-nuclear movement in the United States for over 30 years. He has been a featured speaker on Today, Nightline, National Public Radio,...

Criticism

The movement has been criticized by some environmentalists and scientists for understating the environmental impact of fossil fuels and renewable resources, and overstating the dangers of nuclear power. Bernard Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh, calculates that nuclear power is many times safer than any other form of power generation.

Patrick Moore, one of the initial founders of Greenpeace

Greenpeace

Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...

, said in a 2008 interview that, " "It wasn't until after I'd left Greenpeace and the climate change issue started coming to the forefront that I started rethinking energy policy in general and realised that I had been incorrect in my analysis of nuclear as being some kind of evil plot."

Critics of the movement point to independent studies showing the capital costs of renewable energy sources are higher than those from nuclear power. Critics argue that the amount of waste generated by nuclear power is very small, as all the high-level nuclear waste from 50+ years of operation of the world's nuclear reactors would fit into a single football field to the depth of five feet. By contrast, coal plants create nearly a million tons of waste per day and release more total radioactivity than nuclear plants, due to the uranium and thorium found naturally within the coal. Nuclear proponents also point out that cost and waste figures are derived from nuclear reactors built using second generation designs, dating from the 1960s. Advanced reactor designs are estimated to be much cheaper to operate, and generate less than 1% the amount of waste of current designs.

Recent developments

In November 2009, The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

reported that nuclear power is emerging as "perhaps the world's most unlikely weapon against climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

, with the backing of even some green activists who once campaigned against it". The report said that rather than deride the potential for nuclear power, some environmentalists are embracing it, and that presently there is only "muted opposition" -- nothing like the protests and plant invasions that helped define the anti-nuclear movement in the United States during the 1970s.

As of early 2010, anti-nuclear groups such as Physicians for Social Responsibility, NukeFree.org, and NIRS were actively fighting federal loan guarantees for new nuclear plant construction. In February 2010, several groups coordinated a national call-in day to Congress to attempt to stop $54 billion in federal loan guarantees for new nuclear plants. However, the first such loan guarantee of $8.3 billion was offered to Southern Company that same month.

In January 2010, about 175 anti-nuclear activists participated in a 126-mile walk in an effort to block the re-licensing of Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant

Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant

. In February 2010, a large number of anti-nuclear activists and private citizens gathered in Montpelier to be at hand as the Vermont Senate

Vermont Senate

The Vermont Senate is the upper house of the Vermont General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Vermont. The Senate consists of 30 members. Senate districting divides the 30 members into three single-member districts, six two-member districts, three three-member districts, and one...

voted 26 to 4 against the "Public Good" certificate needed for continued operation of Vermont Yankee past 2012.

In April 2010 a dozen environmental groups (including Friends of the Earth

Friends of the Earth

, South Carolina's Sierra Club

Sierra Club

, Nuclear Watch South, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Georgia Women's Action for New Directions) stated that the proposed AP1000 reactor containment design is "inherently less safe than current reactors". Arnold Gundersen

Arnold Gundersen

, a nuclear engineer, authored a 32-page report arguing that the new AP1000 reactors will be vulnerable to leaks caused by corrosion holes. There are plans for the Westinghouse AP1000 reactors to be constructed at seven sites across the southeast, including Plant Vogtle in Burke County, Georgia.

In October 2010, Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

anti-nuclear group, predicted that the U.S. nuclear industry will not experience a nuclear renaissance

Nuclear renaissance

Since about 2001 the term nuclear renaissance has been used to refer to a possible nuclear power industry revival, driven by rising fossil fuel prices and new concerns about meeting greenhouse gas emission limits. At the same time, various barriers to a nuclear renaissance have been identified...

, for the most simple of reasons: “nuclear reactors make no economic sense”. The economic slump has driven down electricity demand and the price of competing energy sources, and Congress has failed of to pass climate change legislation, making nuclear economics very difficult.

Governor-elect Peter Shumlin is a prominent opponent of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant and two days after Shumlin was elected in November 2010, Entergy

Entergy

Entergy Corporation is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. It is headquartered in the Central Business District of New Orleans, Louisiana.-History:...

put the plant up for sale.

Post-Fukushima

Following the 2011 Japanese nuclear accidents

2011 Japanese nuclear accidents

This is a list of articles describing aspects of the nuclear shut-downs, failures, and nuclear meltdowns triggered by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.-Fukushima nuclear power plants:* Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant...

, activists who were involved in the movement’s emergence (such as Graham Nash

Graham Nash

and Paul Gunter

Paul Gunter

), suggest that Japan’s nuclear crisis may rekindle an anti-nuclear protest movement in the United States. The aim, they say, is "not just to block the Obama administration’s push for new nuclear construction, but to convince Americans that existing plants pose dangers".

In March 2011, 600 people gathered for a weekend protest outside the Vermont Yankee plant. The demonstration was held to show support for the thousands of Japanese people who are endangered by possible radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

The is a series of equipment failures, nuclear meltdowns, and releases of radioactive materials at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011. The plant comprises six separate boiling water reactors originally designed by General Electric ,...

.

In April 2011, Rochelle Becker, executive director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility said that the United States should review its nuclear accident liability limits, in the light of the economic impacts of the Fukushima disaster.

The New England region has a long history of anti-nuclear

Anti-nuclear

activism and 75 people held a State House rally on April 6, 2011, to "protest the region’s aging nuclear plants and the increasing stockpile of radioactive spent fuel rods at them". The protest was held shortly before a State House hearing where legislators were scheduled to hear representatives of the region’s three nuclear plants – Pilgrim in Plymouth, Vermont Yankee in Vernon, and Seabrook in New Hampshire -- talk about the safety of their reactors in the light of the Japanese nuclear crisis. Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim have designs similar to the crippled Japanese nuclear plant.

As of April 2011, a total of 45 groups and individuals from across the nation are formally asking the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to immediately suspend all licensing and other activities at 21 proposed nuclear reactor projects in 15 states until the NRC completes a thorough post-Fukushima reactor crisis examination. The petitioners also are asking the NRC to supplement its own investigation by establishing an independent commission comparable to that set up in the wake of the serious, though less severe, 1979 Three Mile Island accident

Three Mile Island accident

The Three Mile Island accident was a core meltdown in Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania near Harrisburg, United States in 1979....

. The petitioners include Public Citizen

Public Citizen

, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy

Southern Alliance for Clean Energy

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy is a non-profit, nonpartisan energy watchdog group based in the Southeastern United States . SACE was originally organized under the name Tennessee Valley Energy Coalition in 1985...

, and San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace.

Thirty two years after the No Nukes concert in New York, on August 7, 2011, a Musicians United for Safe Energy

Musicians United for Safe Energy

Musicians United for Safe Energy, or MUSE, is an activist group founded in 1979 by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, and John Hall. The group advocates against the use of nuclear energy, forming shortly after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in March 1979...

benefit concert was held at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA. to raise money for MUSE and for Japanese tsunami/nuclear disaster relief. Artists included Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, John Hall, Graham Nash, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Kitaro, Jason Mraz, Sweet Honey and the Rock, the Doobie Brothers, Tom Morello, and Jonathan Wilson. The show was powered off-grid.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Emergence of the anti-nuclear weapons movement

Emergence of the anti-nuclear power movement

Complexity of nuclear power

Anti-nuclear protests

Specific groups

Al Gore

Amory Lovins

Joseph Romm

Lester Brown

Christopher Flavin

Other people

Criticism

Recent developments

Post-Fukushima

See also

External links