Landscapes of Threat? Exploring Discourses of Stigma around Large Energy Developments

In UK policy, concerns about climate change, energy security and system renewal, combine to create an imperative for transitions in landscapes of energy production. Some of the energy developments that will be central in these transitions are imbued with historical associations of, for example, �risk and threat�, which have been asserted to potentially lead to the stigmatisation of place and people in place. This paper explores stigmatisation through an analysis of data from interviews across two case sites in close proximity to existing and proposed energy developments. We show how our participants engage with or resist the notion that they are dwelling in �landscapes of threat� and argue that stigma is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that is differentially encountered and experienced even within similar areas. In concluding, we argue that whilst people may experience stigmatising effects, this does not necessarily lead to them feeling stigmatised

Reframing nuclear power in the UK energy debate: Nuclear power, climate change mitigation and radioactive waste

In the past decade, human influence on the climate through increased use of fossil fuels has become widely acknowledged as one of the most pressing issues for the global community. For the United Kingdom, we suggest that these concerns have increasingly become manifest in a new strand of political debate around energy policy, which reframes nuclear power as part of the solution to the need for low-carbon energy options. A mixed-methods analysis of citizen views of climate change and radioactive waste is presented, integrating focus group data and a nationally representative survey. The data allow us to explore how UK citizens might now and in the future interpret and make sense of this new framing of nuclear power-which ultimately centers on a risk-risk trade-off scenario. We use the term "reluctant acceptance" to describe how, in complex ways, many focus group participants discursively re-negotiated their position on nuclear energy when it was positioned alongside climate change. In the concluding section of the paper, we reflect on the societal implications of the emerging discourse of new nuclear build as a means of delivering climate change mitigation and set an agenda for future research regarding the (re)framing of the nuclear energy debate in the UK and beyond