Nuclear risks and benefits

Available for over a year

Few scientific breakthroughs can have generated greater possibility and peril than the splitting of the atom. The awesome power it released seemed to offer incredible possibilities - electricity "too cheap to meter" - and terrible risks - as the mushroom clouds over Nagasaki and Hiroshima hearalded. Of course nuclear power never lived up to the original hope - Fukushima is just the latest in a series of accidents that showed that the benefits could not be adequately separated from the risks. But do fears of global warming require the calculus of risks and benefits be rewritten? The balance is now between the risk of a nuclear accident and the apparent certainty of global warming unless carbon dioxide emissions are cut back. Indeed, until Fukushima nuclear power had seemed poised for a renaissance and countries like Poland had begun to plan for a massive increase in nuclear generation. Zbigniew Kubacki is the Director of the Nuclear Energy Department in the Polish Ministry Of Economy. He explains the challenges of his country's energy policy to Justin Rowlatt. Mr Kubacki says the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima plant following the tsunami in Japan last year has not put the Polish government off nuclear power. In neighbouring Germany the reaction was very different. Germany says it plans to phase out nuclear power entirely but is that really possible? Klaus Toepfer, the former German environment minister who headed the commission to advise the government on the process told the BBC's Berlin Correspondent Steve Evans that Germany needs to do more if the transition away from nuclear power is to go smoothly. Plus - nuclear power is one of the few technologies that can generate large scale low carbon energy. If you take it out of the mix then cutting carbon dioxide emissions becomes even more challenging. Ken Caldeira is a climate scientist working for the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University, in his opinion even high prices for fossil fuel won't encourage us to invest in power that's greener.