Nuclear Redux: Media Framing of Nuclear Energy and Risk in the 21st Century

Madelynn Telkamp, University of Wyoming
Amanda Sikirica, University of Wyoming
Daniel Auerbach, University of Wyoming

Nuclear power is having another moment in the sun in U.S. energy development. While nuclear power was lauded by some in the U.S. in the mid-20th century as the power of the future, nuclear accidents, negative public opinion, concerted social movements, growing financial challenges, and shifting geopolitical tensions rewrote the history of nuclear power in the U.S. as a limited fuel source. A new regional nuclear development plan has emerged in the Mountain West, connecting uranium mining, refinement, power generation, and waste storage in one region. Previous research has suggested the perceptions of risk around new energy development is impacted by geographic proximity and community history, and that news media may play an important role in presenting frames about new and proposed energy projects. For this project, we gather newspaper coverage from 2019 to 2025 of this ‘new generation’ of nuclear power in the Mountain West from national (U.S.), regional (Mountain West), state (Wyoming), and local (Kemmerer, WY) news outlets. We use the case of TerraPower’s project in Kemmerer, WY as our central case in the region. We ask how this novel wave of investment in nuclear power is framed at these various geographic levels, particularly around risk frames and connections to historical nuclear projects. We are expanding this project to compare news frames from this wave of nuclear development to previous waves of investment in the 20th century.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 53. Energy, Climate Change, and the Immediacy of the Present