Balancing Risks and Anxiety in Understanding Radiation Effects

The world needs sources of low-carbon fuel, so why are we so afraid of nuclear energy? Justin Rowlatt speaks to Geraldine Thomas, professor of molecular pathology at Imperial College London, about the cancer rates in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster in Soviet Ukraine in 1986, and to Spencer Weart, former director of the Center for the History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics about the evolution of "nuclear fear". Dr Arjun Makhijani from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Washington DC gives the case for why we really should be afraid.

Producer: Laurence Knight

(Photo: An early nuclear test at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1950s, Credit: Getty Images)