Rearticulating Nuclear Power: Energy Activism and Contested Common Sense

Abstract

This essay utilizes the perspective of articulation theory to examine how environmental advocates, public interest organizations, and citizen-consumers have challenged the nuclear industry's expansion efforts, linking strategies at local and global levels. The industry has articulated a material and discursive formation including reactor construction projects, financial and political arrangements, and an overarching narrative of nuclear necessity and inevitability. Opponents have responded by linking organizations, individuals, histories, geographies, and expertise, re-articulating the place of nuclear power in the field of energy choices. This essay examines those opposing articulations in the context of efforts to construct new nuclear power plants in the southeastern USA. There, opponents have challenged state-level regulatory approval of a corporate merger that would facilitate new nuclear construction and financing arrangements that would shift economic risks from the corporation to consumers. These local engagements have broader consequences: in challenging one corporation's nuclear ambitions, opponents also challenge the global industry narrative of nuclear necessity and inevitability.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17524032.2014.978348#.VGtNSIe7nlM