Dangerous, dear and dying: why the consensus on nuclear power is wrong

Nuclear power is viewed as too dangerous and too costly to form part of our energy future. That’s plain wrong – and it could spell huge opportunity, says Dylan Grice.

In 1987 Paul Slovic, the famous decision theorist, published work into a theory of how the public's perception of risk differs from what an expert would consider rational. The example that best illustrated this was that of nuclear power, which all groups ranked at, or close to, the most frightening in a list that included smoking, motorcycles and handguns.

Things haven't changed much since. A recent survey of attitudes on different sources of energy from the Pew Research Center tied nuclear energy with fracking, both of which marginally pipped coal to the post for the prize of least-popular energy solution in the US (renewables win the branding competition).

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Dylan Grice is the co-founder of Calderwood Capital.