Why and how the debate about nuclear energy needs to be reframed for the future

Discussion about nuclear energy has long been marked by extreme polarization, with proponents and opponents seeming to inhabit separate worlds when making wildly different claims about the future of nuclear energy. In making these claims, proponents and opponents do not engage with one another, hoping to learn; rather, they try to evangelize, seeking to convince the other side of what they view as universal truths about nuclear energy. These claims to absolute truth frequently rely on emotion, apocalyptic imagery, rigid logic, and separation of connected facts (what the authors call “rhetorical fission”) or connection of fragmented facts (“rhetorical fusion”). In this article, the authors argue for a different way of discussing the many issues around the use of nuclear energy to provide electrical power, one that moves beyond rhetorical fission and fusion and acknowledges uncertainty and the place-based nature of the issue. This model asks proponents and opponents to think beyond their identities as advocates and bring previously unheard voices and forms of evidence to a deliberative co-creation of planetary futures.