ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how pro-nuclear advocates talk among themselves about anti-nuclear and environmental activists. It demonstrates how strategic maneuvering in the internal rhetoric of scientists upholds a particular set of beliefs about science and technology, or what George Marcus called “technoscientific imaginary”. The chapter highlights ways nuclear scientists and engineers discursively characterize activists via strategic maneuvering. It focuses on how nuclear professionals characterized environmentalists and “antis.” To rectify the aforementioned tension, nuclear scientists construct an internal strategic maneuver where activists’ opposition argumentatively validates the scientific supremacy of nuclear. Nuclear professionals use three central argumentative themes that denigrate environmentalists to strategically situate nuclear as a clean energy source: “antis” are ignorant of science, they forward disingenuous arguments, and they are an outsized group. The chapter concludes with implications for social movement studies, rhetoric of science, and future collaborations between environmentalists and scientists.
