• Question: What are your views on the recent nuclear crisis in japan, caused by the Earthquake?

    Asked by frogdwarf to Charlie, Eoin, Jemma, Julian, Steve on 21 Mar 2011.
    • Photo: Julian Rayner

      Julian Rayner answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      Terrified by the footage, and wish we could do more to help than just send money. Horrible stuff. I had family in the earthquake in New Zealand – they are fine, but it was very scary to know people in harms way. My heart goes out to all the families affected.

    • Photo: Stephen Moss

      Stephen Moss answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      Hi Frogdwarf

      This is of course an appalling tragedy, but the nuclear crisis really is a consequence of the human need for energy. As the worlds population increases, our demand for energy rises too, and nuclear power is one of the most convenient, efficient and cost-effective ways of creating power. However, if the technology fails, the consequences can be dire. I doubt whether the events in Japan will deter governments from building more nuclear power stations, but it may cause people to think twice before building them in earthquake zones.

    • Photo: Eoin Lettice

      Eoin Lettice answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      Hi frogdwarf,
      Thanks for this very topical and interesting question!
      It seems really worrying at the moment and fingers crossed those working to fix the problem will be successful. I think we need to totally review where we all get our energy from. Nuclear energy is generally pretty safe, I think, but accidents like this make people very worried. On the otherhand, eventually all of our gas and oil reserves will be used up. So, I think we need to use more renewable forms of energy – that’s things like wind, solar and wave power which will never run out! They are free and clean forms of energy which we can all use.

      Eoin

    • Photo: Charlie Ryan

      Charlie Ryan answered on 20 Mar 2011:

      hi frogdwarf, from a personal perspective i find it quite horrifying, and i really feel for the Japanese people.
      From a scientific prespective i don’t really know – i am not a nuclear physicist. I have no objections to using nuclear power, and can understand why Japan used it as they do not have many other choices for power generation. I also don’t think it is as dangerous as it is sometimes being described – the radiation does seem to be only affecting a small area, which would seem to of been evacuated.

    • Photo: Jemma Ransom

      Jemma Ransom answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      It’s a real tragedy. However, I think that we should be careful about making any knee-jerk decisions on nuclear energy in Europe based on the evetns in Japan. Germany has decided to decomission its reactors in response to the crisis which I think is a bad decision. It is very highly unlikely that anything like this will happen in the UK, and there are at present no viable alternatives to coal fire and nuclear stations as producers of energy – we simply can’t switch off the reactors yet

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