ConcernsBasicsJonathan Bobby didn’t move to Campbell County, Virginia to fight a power company. He moved there nine years ago from the D.C. suburbs, bought 40 acres, and started building a retirement property around two ponds. Now a proposed 765-kilovolt transmission line tied to Appalachian Power’s small modular reactor project could run directly over the dam between them, and the company hasn’t even finalized the route yet. Bobby told a local news station he isn’t opposed to nuclear technology itself. He’s opposed to decisions being made by people who “don’t live here, don’t work here, don’t farm here.”
Eight hundred miles northwest, in Kemmerer, Wyoming, the story reads almost like a press release. TerraPower’s Natrium project broke ground next to a retiring coal plant, and the City Administrator went on record saying the community is optimistic about its economic future. Same technology category. Same regulatory agency. Wildly different rooms.
If you’re building, permitting, or working communications for an SMR project, you will eventually stand in one of those rooms. This is a guide to what actually works when you do, based on what’s happening in real siting fights right now, not on the talking points from the last industry conference.
The polling gap nobody in nuclear wants to talk about
Nuclear’s national numbers have never looked better. The 2026 Bisconti Research survey put favorability to nuclear energy at a record high, 77% in favor against 23% opposed, with roughly a six-to-one gap between people who feel strongly in favor and people who feel strongly opposed. Even more relevant to your project: 70% of respondents said they’d find it acceptable to add a new SMR next to an existing nuclear plant near them.
Here’s the number that matters more than any of those. Gallup’s own 2026 poll, cited in that same Bisconti research, found that 53% of Americans opposed construction of a nuclear power plant in their own area, even as national support for nuclear was hitting decade highs. That’s not a contradiction; it’s the entire game. People can support nuclear energy in the abstract and still object to a specific transmission corridor across a specific dam on a specific piece of land they own.
A few numbers worth having in your back pocket before any community meeting:
National favorability toward nuclear energy: 77% (Bisconti, 2026)
Acceptance of a new SMR next to an existing nuclear site: 70% (Bisconti, 2026)
Opposition to a nuclear plant in one’s own area, regardless of general support: 53% (Gallup, 2026)
Favorable impressions among people who already live near an operating plant: well above 80% in prior Bisconti waves
That last figure is the one worth repeating out loud. Existing nuclear neighbors are consistently the most supportive population in any nuclear poll. Skepticism tends to concentrate in the gap between “no reactor yet” and “reactor operating safely for years.” Your job during that gap is to shrink the uncertainty, not to argue people out of having it.
What your neighbors are actually worried about
Read the transcripts from any recent SMR siting dispute and radiation barely comes up. In Campbell County, the objections Appalachian Power is fielding are almost entirely about implementation, not physics:
Eminent domain and property impact — the transmission corridor question, not the reactor itself
Water use — Appalachian Power hasn’t yet decided between water and air cooling, and residents downriver want to know before, not after, a drought year
Process exclusion — resident Shelly Evans pointed out that Campbell County’s industrial zoning ordinance was drafted with input only from AEP’s own engineers, no outside experts
Motive and demand — a suspicion that the real driver is unverified data center growth in Northern Virginia, not local need
Long-term cost exposure — worry that grid expansion costs land on household electric bills regardless of who the customer ends up being
None of that is anti-nuclear sentiment. It’s the standard local response to any large industrial infrastructure, whether it’s a reactor, a pipeline, or a transmission line, and it deserves a direct answer rather than a lecture about passive safety systems nobody asked about.
There’s a failure mode worth naming here too. At a recent SMR forum in New Brunswick, Canada, organizers and industry attendees largely treated disagreement as a symptom of misunderstanding or misinformation rather than a legitimate competing view, and the Passamaquoddy Nation, whose homeland hosts the proposed projects, wasn’t formally invited to its own regional forum. Treating skepticism as an education gap instead of a genuine interest conflict is probably the single fastest way to convert a wary neighbor into a hostile one.
The regulatory process, in terms your neighbor will actually ask about
Most residents don’t know how much room they actually have to shape an SMR project, and vague reassurances about “the NRC handles safety” tend to make people more suspicious, not less. Better to walk them through the real sequence:
Pre-application engagement. Long before a formal application, developers meet informally with NRC staff on design and siting questions. This isn’t required, but nearly every serious applicant does it.
Federal Register notice. Once an application is filed and accepted, the NRC publishes notice and opens a public comment period.
Scoping meetings. Held near the proposed site specifically to gather input for the environmental review, these are where local water, wildlife, and land-use concerns get formally logged.
Public meetings and hearings. For projects with strong local interest, the NRC holds meetings in the affected community, and individuals directly affected can participate in a formal hearing.
Petition rights. Residents can petition to modify license terms under 10 CFR 2.206, a mechanism most people have never heard of and almost never get told about.
One current wrinkle worth flagging honestly: a 2026 executive order directs the NRC to complete most licensing actions within 12 to 18 months, a sharp compression from historical timelines. That’s genuinely useful context for a skeptical neighbor, because it means the public comment window is shorter and less forgiving than it used to be, and showing up early actually matters more than it did five years ago. If you’re trying to track how that timeline reform is playing out project by project, SMRbrief Pro keeps a running, searchable log of NRC dockets and milestones across every active SMR application in the country.
Kemmerer said yes. Campbell County is still deciding. Here’s the difference.
It’s tempting to credit Kemmerer’s warmer reception to Wyoming’s coal heritage, and that’s part of it. But TerraPower’s own siting process treated community support as a selection criterion, not an afterthought bolted on after the site was already chosen. The company evaluated Kemmerer alongside other candidates specifically on that basis, spent months meeting with residents before announcing a preferred site, and only then moved to land purchase and permitting. The NRC’s approval of the Kemmerer-1 construction permit this spring was the agency’s first commercial reactor construction approval in nearly a decade.
Campbell County’s process, at least as residents describe it, ran in something closer to the opposite order: a zoning ordinance drafted with input from the utility’s own engineers, a site chosen at an existing substation, and then public concern arriving after decisions were already partly made. Campbell County’s Board of Supervisors responded last month by voting to hire outside experts before ruling on the zoning change, which is a reasonable corrective but a slower and more adversarial path than starting with genuine consultation in the first place.
The practical tool that tends to bridge this gap is a formal host community agreement or community benefit agreement, spelling out payments in lieu of taxes, local hiring commitments, and direct funding for schools or emergency services, negotiated before the vote, not offered as a concession after opposition hardens. These agreements are common in wind and solar siting and increasingly show up in nuclear host communities as a way to convert an abstract promise of “economic benefit” into a legally binding, auditable one. If your project doesn’t have one yet, that’s usually the first gap a skeptical resident will notice.
A script that treats skepticism as legitimate, not ignorance
When you’re actually standing in front of someone who doesn’t want a reactor near their farm, a few things consistently work better than others:
Lead with the specific numbers, not reassurance. Name the reactor type, the megawatt range, the water plan (or admit it isn’t decided yet), and the regulatory body reviewing it. Vagueness reads as evasion even when it isn’t.
Answer the property question before the safety question. Nobody at a Campbell County meeting is losing sleep over core meltdown physics. They’re losing sleep over a transmission easement across their blueberry crop.
Say “we don’t know yet” out loud when it’s true. Appalachian Power hasn’t picked a reactor vendor, a cooling method, or a transmission route. Pretending otherwise to sound confident backfires the moment someone checks.
Point people toward the actual comment process, including the scoping meetings and 10 CFR 2.206 petition rights most residents have never heard mentioned. A neighbor who knows they have a formal channel is measurably calmer than one who feels shut out.
Bring the host community agreement to the first meeting, not the fifth. Waiting to offer concrete local benefits until after opposition has organized reads as capitulation instead of good faith.
Do this well and you’re not persuading anyone that nuclear is safe. Most of your neighbors already believe that, or Gallup’s 77% figure wouldn’t exist. You’re persuading them that this specific project, on this specific road, run by these specific people, is being handled honestly. That’s a much narrower and far more winnable argument. Which of Campbell County’s five objections would your own project’s current plan actually survive being asked about tonight?