The changing tide of public opinion has a real and tangible impact on the progress of nuclear fission adoption, and the next generation of nuclear companies relies on that support in the realms of funding, licensing, and site selection. Luckily for the industry, things are looking up.
Polling company Gallup published new research on support for the nuclear fission industry for the first time since 2023. And the results show that support is up—61% of Americans support using nuclear power in the US.
That number may not seem all that high, but it’s the second-highest level of support nuclear energy has garnered in the last 30 years. In 2010, support hit 62%. By 2016, opposition to nuclear power outweighed support.
Party lines: Though most Americans support the use of nuclear power, all sides don’t see it equally. Republicans are more likely to back the energy source than Democrats, and that’s tracked with the ebbs and flows of support for nuclear over the years.
- This year, 74% of Republicans expressed support for nuclear power.
- 46% of Democrats support nuclear, per the poll—unchanged from 2023.
- 2012 was the last time a majority of Democrats signaled support for nuclear, when they polled at 52%.
Nuclear energy has been a pillar of the Trump administration’s energy policy, even as loans and programs for renewables, including wind and solar, face cuts and uncertainty.
“This ‘nuclear renaissance’ has been talked about for years,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in February in his welcome address to the DOE. “Yeah, there’s things that have been tripping it up. We got to get beyond that. We’ve got to get nuclear energy going again.”
Point of comparison: The same Gallup poll asked about certain measures to increase domestic oil and gas production—and if you thought nuclear was a policy issue that split along party lines, it doesn’t hold a candle to the fracking question. 81% of Republicans favor fracking; 79% of Democrats oppose it. The numbers are similar for offshore drilling, which 85% of Republicans support and 79% of Democrats oppose.
The bottom line: Nuclear power is shown a lot of love from the current administration, but its status as a clean energy source and its inherent reliability win it a fair amount of bipartisan support—and that support appears to be on the rise.
Lead Reporter of Ignition
