Despite what we’ve seen in Japan, nuclear power plants aren’t necessarily a bad thing

The Blitz was the last time Britain faced a national disaster on the scale of the Japanese Earthquake. The number of people who remember living through that catastrophe has obviously been declining but despite no firsthand experience of apocalyptic calamity we Brits seem to be genuinely sympathetic to the plight of humans who live in countries more prone to disasters.

Red Nose Day has proved that the British public underwrite their concern for other countries with cash despite the fact that we don't endure famines and natural disaster because we enjoy (if that is the right word) a mild climate. However our natural disaster-free existence could be under threat if the world learns the wrong lessons from the tragedy, which could make a temperate Britain a much more dangerous place to live. The wrong lessons already seem to have been learnt by Germany, Austria and the brave Swiss (all countries notable for their lack of seismic activity). They have decided that nuclear power is dangerously unstable and have begun to close plants or scale back building plans.

The only conceivable disaster which could wipe out anything like the 5,692 people confirmed dead (at the time of writing) in this country would probably be a virulent virus rather than a geological or climatic event, for the time being that is. Decommissioning nuclear power stations could actually increase the potential for natural disasters in Europe as a result of extreme weather events caused by climate change, because nuclear power is one of the main ways of reducing greenhouse gases caused by burning fossil fuels.

The brave Fukushima 50 who are currently trying to regain control of the stricken reactor in Japan must be in intense danger. Of the 56 people who died as a direct result of the explosion at Chernobyl (nearly 25 years before the reactor in Japan began to meltdown) most were shift-workers and firemen who fought to stabilise the Ukrainian reactor with no protective clothing.

The UN nuclear watchdog attributes at least another 4,000 deaths to cancer caused by radiation (in subsequent years.) These figures are disputed by Greenpeace who also disagree with a claim by the report's author Dr Burton Bennett that: "lifestyle diseases" such as illnesses caused by smoking, drinking and stress "pose a far greater threat to local communities than does radiation exposure." Whatever the final death toll it is important to remember that the Chernobyl disaster was the result of a combination of human error and technical failures. In other words the accident was preventable, like the explosion in Japan.

The Japanese Government had been warned by seismologist Ishibashi Katsuhiko that an accident was very likely to occur. Nuclear power plants in Japan have a "fundamental vulnerability" to major earthquakes, Katsuhiko said in 2007. Katsuhiko, a professor of urban safety at Kobe University, had already highlighted three incidents at reactors between 2005 and 2007 where atomic plants were struck by earthquakes stronger than those to which the reactor had been designed to survive. So, like in Chernobyl, nuclear power itself is not the problem, low safety standards are.

Tokyo narrowly avoided a blackout this week, which would have caused more chaos and misery, because of a shortage of energy supply. Stewart Brand is one of the founders of the environmental movement and is now an advocate of nuclear power for two reasons: 1) cities like Tokyo require baseload energy supplies to keep the lights on 2) currently baseload energy can only be supplied by fossil fuel burning power stations, hydro electric power (from dams) and nuclear energy because wind and solar is too unreliable. As hydro is often not an option Brand believes we need to increase nuclear capacity as the only viable source of green energy to power the world's expanding cities, because generating one gigawatt of power using coal pumps 8,000,000 tons of Co2 into the atmosphere compared to only 20 tons produced by nuclear.

Mismanaged nuclear power can cause immediate catastrophes but if we reject it because of the dangers we'll risk finding out what natural disasters are like first hand, and as the fairly cold winter this year demonstrated... this country is not equipped for dealing with disasters.