Washington (Platts)--2Apr2014/307 pm EDT/1907 GMT

Sixty-three percent of US adults favor the use of nuclear power as one of the country's sources of electricity and 34% oppose it, a slight decline from support expressed in September, according to a poll conducted by Bisconti Research and Quest Global Research for the Nuclear Energy Institute and released Wednesday.

The industry group's release did not discuss possible reasons for differences from the results reported in September.

In a previous poll conducted by Bisconti and GfK Roper for NEI in September, 69% of respondents favored nuclear power and 29% opposed it. A February 2013 poll found that 68% favored nuclear power and 29% opposed it.

NEI said 70% of respondents in the latest poll agreed that nuclear power plants operating in the US are "safe and secure," down from 77% in the September poll.

Also, 72% of the respondents said "electric companies should prepare now so that new nuclear power plants could be built if needed in the next decade," NEI said, down from 75% in the September poll.

The firms conducted telephone interviews of a "nationally representative sample" of 1,000 US adults March 6-21, NEI said. The survey's margin of error was plus or minus three percentage points.

NEI will post the full poll results on their website at www.nei.org.

--Steven Dolley, steven.dolley@platts.com
--Edited by Derek Sands, derek.sands@platts.com

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