The Atom & Us: Andy Stirling

"The concealment, misinformation, mendacity and general attempts to suppress and intimidate debate have made me extremely worried for our democracy."

May 31, 2025

Thanks for reading ‘The Atom & Us’, a series of interviews in which I’m spotlighting the work and insights of some of the incredibly interesting individuals I've been privileged to get to know through making & distributing my own nuclear history film, 'The Atom: A Love Affair' - from scholars and artists, to industry professionals, campaigners and more.

Together, I hope their shared ideas & experiences of the atomic age will help us all deepen our understanding of one of the most vital & urgent - yet in my view also one of the least well-discussed & understood - topics of our 21st century world.

Hello friends.

And welcome back to my virtual parlour for another stimulating chat about our atomic world.

If you're new here, the format is simple - I pose the same set of questions to each contributor as an entry point into exploring their own involvement in nuclear issues and then respond briefly at the end, before encouraging replies and comments from you, my esteemed readers. And don't forget, if you're reading this in email, there's always the option of the Substack app, for a cleaner reading experience and easy commenting, if that appeals:

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Today's interview brings us back to the aspect I'm personally most familiar with through the research for my film, namely civil nuclear power, and in that regard serves as a companion piece to an earlier interview in this series, with nuclear industry stalwart Adrian Bull (you can read that one here).

It also feels especially timely just a week after Donald Trump signed a series of Executive Orders intended to kickstart the building of a raft of new nuclear plants in the US, to create what the White House called an “American nuclear renaissance”.

If you've seen my film, you mightn't be too surprised at my reaction to this announcement: it's a tune I've heard many times before, from George W. Bush, then from Obama, then from Trump the first time around and, most recently, just last year, from Joe Biden.

It's not clear to me why Trump would now succeed where his predecessors (including himself!) all failed. But what I do find very interesting is the shift in emphasis, with so much focus now being placed on the need for strings of small modular nuclear reactors to provide electricity for vast data centres to power the rush to AI (a move which is presented as largely inevitable).

If I was still making my film now, this latest shift in messaging - and the rise in optimism within the industry that it's engendering - certainly feels like it would slot neatly in line after/alongside previous arguments centred variously around mid-century techno-optimism, energy security/independence and climate change.

Know someone interested in energy, politics or the military? Why not introduce them to more of the atomic writing here on Vicki Lesley is…Documental!

I was also struck by the fact that of the four executive orders Trump announced, one of them explicitly refers to identifying "novel uses of advanced nuclear reactor technologies for defense applications". That's because it's been unusual through the decades since the atomic bomb was first unleashed on the world 80 years ago this year, to see links between the military and civilian side of the nuclear project mentioned openly, especially in the UK, where I'm writing from1.

And that civil/military connection leads me neatly on to today's interviewee, since it's been at the heart of much of his recent work. So I'd better get on and introduce him!

Andy Stirling

Andy is Professor of Science and Technology Policy at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex in Brighton. His early career in the 1980s, following undergraduate studies in astrophysics and 'science studies' and a masters in archaeology and social anthropology, included time as a field archaeologist and ecology and peace activist, before a few years at Greenpeace co-ordinating their international nuclear, disarmament and energy campaigns.

In 1990, he undertook a phD at SPRU on UK and international policy and innovation in nuclear and renewable energy - and he's been there ever since!

These days his work focuses on issues of power, uncertainty and diversity in science and technology, especially around energy and biotech, and he's served on several UK, EU and wider governmental advisory committees including currently as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

I first became properly aware of him when he published some provocative work, alongside his Sussex colleague Phil Johnstone, probing the links between the UK government's civil nuclear energy ambitions and its status as a nuclear weapons state with nuclear submarines to maintain. By then we were deep in post-production on my film and ultimately it proved too late to meaningfully incorporate it into the edit, so I was very pleased that we were able to hold one of our first virtual screenings of the film with SPRU, back in early 2021.

Despite living in the same city though, it would still take two more years before we finally met face to face, when the Duke of York's Picturehouse in Brighton screened the film for Zero Emissions Day in Sept 2023 and Andy very kindly agreed to take part in the panel discussion afterwards (he’s furthest on the right).

It was great to finally shake his hand2 and his contributions to the discussion that evening were incredibly illuminating, raising questions of democratic mandate and accountability that I rarely see raised in most media coverage of nuclear power. So it's my great pleasure to be able to share more of his thoughts with you now - and I'd love to hear your reaction to them. Over to you Andy...

Who are you and what's your connection to 'the atom'?

My name is Andy Stirling. As a student, activist, researcher, teacher, policy adviser and occasional media commentator, I’ve spent my whole career (among other things) working on issues variously linked to civil and military nuclear technologies.

Tell me about your early memories, thoughts & feelings about nuclear - can you remember when & how you first encountered anything atomic (something you read or saw on the news, or at school maybe, or encountered some other way?)

My earliest memory of my interest in nuclear is of being determined at the age of ten to become a nuclear scientist. Excited by the power and potential of the technology (for good as well as ill), I was motivated to work very hard to grasp the underling science.

When did you first become actively engaged in working in/thinking about nuclear and what did that look like for you?

Whilst my fascination for the science and my respect for the skills needed to harness it in effective ways have continued up to the present, I first became actively engaged in thinking harder about the wider implications by reading the ambitious visions of nuclear proponents themselves.

The ways in which they romanticised the potential for this technology, sidelined tricky critical issues, and advocated particular kinds of societies in order to fit the technology (rather than the other way around), led me gradually to shift from a positive to a generally critical viewpoint.

Is there an event or experience from your personal involvement with nuclear that particularly stands out in your memory and why?

There is no single galvanising moment for me, but a steady cumulative growth in awareness about how styles of thinking, kinds of assumption, bodies of information and underpinning values that had all previously informed my enthusiasm for nuclear technologies, were all on closer inspection either incomplete, flawed or open to radically divergent (but often disturbingly concealed) critical questions.

I always thought myself to be quite hard-nosed but optimistic about how the world works. Yet over recent years, my experience as an academic (as well as a frequent government policy adviser) investigating largely hidden industrial links between civil nuclear power and military nuclear capabilities, have truly shocked me about the kind of society I live in.

The levels of concealment, misinformation, mendacity and general attempts to suppress and intimidate debate that I have encountered have made me extremely worried for the state of our democracy.

Why do you personally find it a compelling topic?

The mix of demanding and fascinating science, complex politics and high stakes practical consequences (for energy, climate, wider environment, security, society and democracy) all lead me still to reckon that nuclear debates crystallise out generally crucial issues in ways that rarely occur in other fields.

Why do you think it has always been such a polarising issue and do you have any thoughts on if/how the discourse can be expanded to move beyond a simplistic pro- or anti- binary opposition?

There are many factors in this and much room for uncertainty and divergent views. But the core driver for why nuclear discourse tends to be so polarised, I believe, lie in the distinctive features I identify above. The massively entrenched interests around both energy and military applications are so powerful in their warping effects on balanced debates, that they have provoked intensified responses. In what other area, for instance, does it tend to be so overbearingly taken for granted by proponents that:

their favoured technology is an end in itself not a means to another ends (that needs to be openly and rigorously justified);
that no matter what view is taken, it is unreasonable to suggest that effective alternatives even exist;
that those with good reasons to be sceptical and prefer different options, should be mis-labelled as ‘anti’ their favoured option, irrational or generally against science itself.

It is understandable that such implicitly totalitarian positions provoke a backlash.

What's the most interesting or important thing about nuclear you'd want to tell people that they might not already know?

Whatever views one takes on the details – which are complex and uncertain – it is worth reflecting on some general features of this debate that all may agree on:

the relative competitive of position of nuclear with respect to other low carbon options has declined drastically;
over the years, it is nuclear critics who have a track record of getting associated issues more generally correct, with proponents taking positions – for instance on risk, cost, waste, growth rates, potential – that have been repeatedly demonstrably falsified;
that nuclear is now most strongly advocated on grounds that we should ‘do everything’ in climate action (when it is clearly common sense in a crisis, to do not everything, but what is most effective);
that just at the time when global markets and technical developments have demonstrated beyond doubt that nuclear is a relatively less effective climate strategy, the noise being made in public debates has paradoxically intensified.

On top of the evidence colleagues and I have uncovered over recent years, it is this latter feature that shows perhaps most clearly, that the real drivers of powerful commitments to nuclear technologies are military – and that (especially in countries like the UK) wider debates have become seriously warped by this.

Do you have a favourite bit of atomic culture (song, film, book, video game – anything else!) you'd like to share?

Your film of course, Vicki! For it s sensitivity, balance, playfulness and profundity!3

What do you think I should ask other people about their experiences and thoughts around nuclear?

I think the questions you pose here are a pretty good start.

I'm so grateful to Andy for answering my questions. The work he's done on this issue has really made me think more deeply about the complex and historically so often obscured forces at play in the story of nuclear power.

When I first heard about the hypothesis he and Phil Johnstone were expounding on the possible links between Britain's civil and military nuclear capabilities, I certainly found it a pretty persuasive explanation for the continuing political commitment to nuclear power - going back through successive UK Prime Ministers from Boris Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron, to Brown, Blair and all the way back to Thatcher - in spite of the many promised re-births that just never materialised.

You could argue that as a nuclear-armed state, Britain is well within its rights to seek to maintain the skills and supply chains needed to keep that weapons capability alive (whilst I personally believe we should be working for multilateral nuclear disarmament as a matter of fundamental morality and political urgency, I recognise of course that others don't take that view).

But I share Andy's concern that if this is the actual reason (or a big one - not to dismiss the reality of climate change, the genuine need for energy security etc) for pursuing an expansion of nuclear energy, the case isn't being made explicitly. After all, what does democracy mean if the real forces behind a government's decisions are hidden from the people that elect it?

Andy is a great speaker and if this has piqued your interest in hearing more from him, I can highly recommend this panel he spoke on last year organised by the Dalton Nuclear Institute at Manchester University (where the aforementioned Adrian Bull works in fact, though he wasn't on this particular panel).

It's a discussion about whether nuclear is needed for Net Zero but it's streets ahead of almost any mainstream news programme on TV or radio I've seen on the topic - a genuinely honest, respectful, rigorous and intelligently curious exchange of differing views about if or how nuclear fits in to different potential paths to a zero-carbon future. Plus Andy talks more about the military connection too.

I hope today's post has provided some food for thought for you as we continue to navigate through an increasingly uncertain and dangerous world, in which simple narratives, whilst seductively appealing, belie the true complexities.

There are no straightforward choices as we journey forwards. But being open and honest about what the choices really mean, surely has to be a good place to start.

I'm keen to hear any thoughts or responses you have so please do hit REPLY or comment below. And if you appreciated this, hitting that little ♥️ below, is a very quick and easy gesture that will help others find my work too!

Till the next time, I wish you health, happiness and wisdom… or at the very least a nice sit down😄