How myths are created around nuclear power

Abstract

Saskatchewan hosts considerable expertise on nuclear science and technology, is a centre of uranium mining, and is planning to build small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) for electricity, all of which will require public engagement. Effective engagement with the public requires sophisticated understanding of what people believe about nuclear science and technology, and why those beliefs emerge and persist. We approach these beliefs as the results of mythmaking around nuclear science and technology that date back to the discovery of radiation in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. Mythmaking is a critical term that focuses on the social and historical reasons that particular beliefs have power regardless of whether or not they are “true” in a scientific sense. Policy makers must understand both what the public believes about nuclear science and technology, and how and why those beliefs come to be held. This mode of inquiry will help us understand the ways in which public stakeholders form and disseminate dominant ideas around nuclear science and technology.