A nuclear program can be in a drawer and still not exist. In Latin America, that is not a metaphor. It is the usual way of dealing with technology: it is studied, what is already operating is managed, and the announcement is avoided. The cost is not technical. It is political. Without social acceptance, proposing a new reactor exposes the government to a fight it cannot control. Staying silent is cheaper than explaining.
Mexico has just put it in writing. The Electric Sector Development Plan 2025-2039, published by the Ministry of Energy in October 2025, does not incorporate new nuclear capacity. The current administration in Mexico has said it does not seek to expand nuclear and prioritizes renewables and gas. Laguna Verde continues: unit 1 is licensed until 2050 and unit 2 until 2055. Extending what is already operating does not require the same social license as announcing a third reactor in Alto Lucero. The plan chooses silence. It is not an engineering oversight.
The cost is not the rally. It is the calendar.
The opposition does not have to win an election to stop a project. It is enough to make it unacceptable. In Veracruz, Madres Veracruzanas has led the resistance at Laguna Verde since the eighties, in the wake of Chernobyl. Decades later, local voices continue to demand consultation and emergency plan pathways before discussing another unit. A paper from UNAM, presented at the Mexican Nuclear Society, states it plainly: it has been seen that projects are canceled due to public opposition, and any increase in capacity would have to go through public opinion first.
That is the mechanism. The politician does not only calculate the megawatt. He calculates the headline, the injunction, the consultation, and the photo in front of the plant. If the numbers do not add up, the study is shelved or discussed quietly. Discretion is not institutional modesty. It is electoral risk management.
The IAEA treats that risk as infrastructure, not as a campaign. In the 2025 guide on stakeholder engagement in new programs, dialogue is one of the 19 topics of the milestone approach. It has to start when the country is still considering the option, not when there is already something concrete. The stated purpose is to build trust, show accountability, open consultation early, and discuss benefits and risks. A “clean energy” brochure does not replace that.
What the surveys say, without inflating them
The global climate is not what it was in 2011. The PACE index from Radiant Energy Group, with fieldwork from Savanta, has been measuring support and opposition in dozens of countries. In the edition released in 2025, 46% supported the use of nuclear and 23% opposed it, in 31 countries. In the 2026 report, with Mexico already in the sample, global support was 41.4% and opposition was 28.5%: more supporters than detractors in 23 out of 34 countries. There is a gender gap that matters for any coalition: 48.1% of men in favor, 34.9% of women.
That does not authorize saying that Latin America has already granted the license. The PACE analysis published in the Brazilian Journal of Radiation Sciences concludes that, in Brazil, opposition exceeds support, although the younger generation is the most favorable group and reliability, health, and climate weigh in the judgment. An old GlobeScan survey for the IAEA, from 2005, already showed the regional contrast: 32% of Mexicans in favor of expansion, 14% in Argentina. These are figures from another decade. They serve to remind that Latin American support was never like that of Korea or China, not to cite them as present.
In Chile, a model applied to university students found that, in controversial sources —fossil, hydro, and nuclear— acceptance depends mainly on the perceived benefit, then on trust in the regulator, and finally, on risk. Nuclear is not “explained” with an emissions data point. It is sustained if people believe that the licensing body tells the truth.
Radioprotection is not public relations
This is where the profession that often gets left out of the electric debate comes in. The Federation of Radioprotection of Latin America and the Caribbean groups 19 national societies. Its statute, from 2022, prioritizes the safe use of radiation, a culture of safety, and technical exchange. It is not a vendors' chamber. It is the network of those who measure doses, license practices, and have to respond when the rumor arrives before the report.
On September 24, 2026, in Mexico City, its president, Eduardo Medina Gironzini, confirmed the participation of FRALC in the Nuclear Summit & Expo LATAM and left a conclusion that the forum itself published: without social acceptance, the political cost rises and governments hesitate to propose plans or prefer to keep them under wraps. The invitation that followed was not to a slogan. It was to outreach strategies. It is advisable to take it literally. Acceptance is not decreed at a stand. It is built with those who already talk about occupational risk, medicine, and environment, not just about megawatts.
El Salvador offers contrast, not a model to copy. In May 2026, it received the first INIR mission from Central America. The country loudly states that it is studying nuclear to meet a demand that could double by 2050, with a guiding target of 15% by that year, perhaps with SMR. Announcing the consideration phase is also a political decision. It requires the framework that the IAEA asks for before the concrete: framework, regulator, and stakeholders. Staying silent and announcing poorly comes at a high cost in different ways.
What a congress does not resolve
A forum does not create social license. It can, if designed with that standard, stop treating communication as an annex. Three rules suffice.
The first: do not sell the reactor that the electrical plan does not have. In Mexico, today, the fact is Laguna Verde operating and no new reactor or plant in the PLADESE. Talking about a third reactor as if it were state policy wears down those who later have to ask for trust.
The second: separate real benefit from promise. Isotopes, sterile insect technique, lifespan extension, and safeguards are explained with documentation. An SMR “that is going to change the region” is not. The public distinguishes, better than the sector admits, between what is already generating revenue and what is just a sheet.
The third: the regulator cannot be a filler guest. If trust depends on who licenses, a table without authority —or with authority used as decoration— confirms the prejudice that the industry speaks for itself. Seating them is a goal, not a fact. Until there is a name and date, it is not announced as access.
The political cost of nuclear in LATAM is not a perception mystery. It is the bill for having counted the technology for someone else's accident and for the megawatt that does not arrive, and for having left radiation protection in the technical congress. Without social license, the government does not announce the plan. Sometimes it doesn't even write it down. The pending work is not to convince anyone in two days. It is to make a conversation presentable that, for now, is cheaper in silence.
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Sources
- World Nuclear Association. Nuclear Power in Mexico (update 2026). https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/mexico
- Secretariat of Energy. Electric Sector Development Plan 2025-2039, Official Journal of the Federation, October 17, 2025. Summary: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0437ac1f-6bb2-47c2-a75e-061cb908b040
- IAEA. Stakeholder Engagement in New Nuclear Power Programmes, NE Series NG-T-5.1 (2025). https://www.iaea.org/publications/15875/stakeholder-engagement-in-new-nuclear-power-programmes
- Radiant Energy Group / Savanta. Public Attitudes toward Clean Energy (PACE), editions 2025 and 2026. Coverage: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/poll-finds-global-public-support-for-nuclear-remains-high
- Brazilian Journal of Radiation Sciences. An Analysis of Brazil’s Situation in the PACE Index in regard to Nuclear Energy (2024/2025). https://doi.org/10.15392/2319-0612.2024.2522
- GlobeScan for the IAEA, 2005 survey, cited in Lydia Paredes, LAS-ANS 2016. https://las-ans.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Lydia-Paredes-LAS-ANS2016_Brasil_Aceptacion.pdf
- Bronfman et al. Understanding social acceptance of electricity generation sources (case Chile). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421512002625
- UNAM / Mexican Nuclear Society. Public acceptance of nuclear energy in Mexico, INIS-MX-3666 (2022). https://inis.iaea.org/records/cz67w-qka57
- FRALC. Statute and objectives. https://fralc.org/
- Nuclear Summit & Expo LATAM. Meeting with FRALC: social acceptance, the key to nuclear deployment in LATAM (September 25, 2026). https://www.nuclearsummitexpolat.org/en/blog/news-1/meeting-with-fralc-social-acceptance-the-key-to-nuclear-deployment-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean-10
- IAEA. IAEA Reviews El Salvador’s Nuclear Power Infrastructure Development (May 19, 2026). https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/iaea-reviews-el-salvadors-nuclear-power-infrastructure-development
- Redalyc. Nuclear energy, what is at stake? — case of Veracruz Mothers. https://www.redalyc.org/journal/138/13869749006/
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