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2017.9.29 KIP International Program, “Nuclear Technology challenges and issues in Russia” Mr. Igor Zavyalov: a graduate student of Tokyo University, specializing in Computer Science. A Russian member of KIP.
Mr. Igor Zavyalov: A Russian member of KIP. After graduating from the university in Russia, he came to Japan and now he is specializing in Computer Science. As his major in his university was Atomic Energy, he gave us a lecture on ‘Nuclear Energy.”
This forum is composed of two parts. The first part was the lecture by Mr. Igor, and the second part was discussion on ‘Should we stop using Nuclear power?’
The content of his lecture is as follows. In Russia, the existence of nuclear power plants has been one of the social issues. For many years nuclear energy has been regarded as ‘safe and efficient energy’, and used in the area of medicine, agricultural water purification, thawing, and space development. However, in 1900s, some nuclear power plant accidents occurred and it was revealed that waste disposal was so difficult that it could lead to accidents, and the insufficient knowledge, education and the governmental concealment of accidents had led to ignore the danger of radioactive contamination among citizens. Moreover, currently, Russian government is planning to enlarge the storage facilities of nuclear waste and accept the wastes from other countries, but compensation for radioactive disposure is not enough. This has been a social issue as well. Although Nuclear power is effective and environmentally friendly, it’s difficult to dispose nuclear waste and it can have an enormous harm to the environment and ecology. Therefore, the use of nuclear power should carefully be discussed.
We discussed the theme, ‘Should we stop using nuclear power? If so, are there alternatives?” Those agreed to the abolition had the opinion that, Japan is a small country and prone to a lot of natural disasters, so the possibility of accidents is higher. Thus they thought that Japan should replace nuclear energy to more environmentally friendly energy like green energy.On the other had, those who opposed to abolition asserted that we should consider environmental problems and it is better off using nuclear power.
Other students insisted that each country should decide it because nuclear power generation has an enormous risk of accidents and contamination. Focusing on Japan, which has frequent earthquakes, it can be said that we should spend more money on developing alternative energies. It was a good time to think about which nuclear power is right or wrong.
Natsuki Arii