A separate survey question reveals three possible explanations as to what’s driving female voter’s concerns over building more nuclear facilities: trepidations over storing nuclear waste, the risk for a disaster or meltdown, and the availability of “better” energy alternatives.“It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure that one out,” said Linda Mayrand, a survey participant from Melbourne, Florida, “there are better alternatives.” Mayrand said she would never live within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission designated evacuation zones, areas that span a 10-mile radius from a nuclear power plant.

Frances O’Hara, a poll respondent from San Antonio Texas, said she supports nuclear energy to a certain extent, but was concerned about human error and costs.

“It’s expensive to establish, extremely expensive to maintain, and I think that we would spend our money with more benefit to us by developing solar and wind power.”

She said she would only support building more nuclear plants “where it can be controlled absolutely by people trained to do it,” but that she wasn’t convinced nuclear workers were well equipped to avoid overlooking mistakes.

Donna Stump from York, Penn., said she lived through the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, and was given an option to evacuate the area. She just feels “blessed” that nothing happened to her, and cited nuclear plants’ vulnerability to natural disasters as her top concern. “Some things in nature – I don’t care what you do – can’t be beaten.”

Nicky Davies, a campaigns director for Greenpeace USA, an environmental advocacy group, said the nuclear industry has two Achilles heels. “It is a fact that there’s no safe way to dispose of nuclear power,” and secondly “it’s incredibly expensive.”

While the nuclear industry has room for improvement when it comes to attracting support from women, public perception of nuclear power has actually increased since the 1970s.

Davies said climate change might have something to do with it. “The nuclear industry has definitely jumped on the climate change bandwagon to hide the issue of nuclear waste.”

Bisconti agreed that climate change has played a role. “Women and men readily associate nuclear energy with clean air,” she said, adding that it’s important for the industry to communicate that message.

And despite the gender split, “I think that what is really important is the fact that there is enough support out there to renew licenses, to build plants, and to drive policy,” Bisconti said.

The Morning Consult poll was conducted from April 5 and 7, 2015, among a nationwide sample of 2,047 registered voters. Results from the survey have a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

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