Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
• A professor from the University of Copenhagen who was acting
chairman of the Danish government's Council for Energy was
cited (1976) for the following description of the opponents to
nuclear power: “the opposition is part of a typical 'religious'
wave created by 'barefoot walkers' and others related to bio-
dynamics and home confinement. All of them are governed by
feelings only.”
• In 1979 the chairperson of an organisation campaigning
for nuclear power publicly accused the opponents for being
connected to communistic groups that might be preparing
both sabotage and terrorist actions.
• Also in 1979 the managing director of the largest electric utility
claimed in a Danish newspaper that it was the intention of the
opponents to nuclear power to use the energy controversy as
basis for a revolutionary change of the Danish society.
In several cases my name and the names of some of my
colleagues were included in these accusations in spite of the fact
that we never had any connections to revolutionary communistic
groups nor to terrorists. I have not found a credible psychological
explanation for this change of style.
The Danish parliament granted money in the fall of 1974 for
a balanced information campaign on pros and contras in relation
to nuclear power. The project was placed in a new independent
organisation called the Committee for Information on Energy
Systems. This organisation quickly developed pedagogical infor-
mation materials that were well received by local study groups all
over the country. A special publication was written in collaboration
between a supporter and opponent to nuclear power with a joint
text when they agreed and parallel texts on the same page when
they did not (Linderstrøm-Lang and Meyer, 1975).
The information campaign was a success, but the outcome
was not what was desired by the government: more and more
people became convinced that Denmark should not have nuclear
power. As a consequence, the government decided in April 1975
to discontinue the information campaign after about one year of
work—at a time when the debate was really taking of.
The end result was that the Danish parliament in 1985 (one
year before the Chernobyl accident) decided that nuclear power
should not be included in the Danish energy supply system. This
opened up new political possibilities for Danish wind power and
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