“So what does that mean?” asked @lostkiwi. “White males are the only ones rational enough to know nuclear power’s a good thing?” Others responded with takes less favorable to the white men out there. Karen Daltin Beninato called it the “Homer Simpson factor.”

Here’s my thought on it. Even though polling always strikes me as somewhere between art and dark art, I do think this one highlights a key aspect of how Americans look at nuclear power.

First, I’m going to posit that most people bring their social beliefs to energy, not the other way around. It’s the rare bird whose social beliefs grew out of the study of electrons. So, the debate over something like nuclear power for most people is a subset of a general debate about that other kind of power.

Nuclear power, by its nature, has to be centralized and well-guarded, so we don’t know everything that’s going on at the nation’s atomic facilities. What that means is nuclear power requires citizens to trust the industrial order to do what’s right by society. It requires faith that the engineers and executives who build and run nuclear plants will do the right thing — and if some unexpected thing goes wrong, they’ll tell us about it, even if it hurts their profits or reputations.

White males have been in control of their/our (I’m half-Mexican) political destinies since the country coalesced. White men built the industrial order. White men also built the bomb and the first nuclear reactors. White men also run the companies who construct and operate the nuclear power plants.

Is it any surprise that white men trust the structures that they control?

Meanwhile, other groups have had less access to power. At times women and minorities have been systematically discriminated against. At the very least, few hold high-ranking positions at General Electrics, Bechtels, and utilities that stand to gain from more use of nuclear power. Not to single GE out, but there are seven women and maybe two minorities on the company’s 44-person executive page.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that women and people of color would have more trouble accepting the beneficence of the white male-dominated industrial order?

Nuclear proponents have failed to grasp that all the studies about nuclear safety in the world don’t mean a thing to the people who don’t believe that the books are honest and uncooked. Instead, nuclear fans just keep saying, “Trust us, it’s safe!” in different ways.

And, apparently, only a majority of white men are willing to believe that.