The Dilemma and Future of Nuclear Power

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In this last of a three part podcast,Dr. Theo Theofanous talks about the health impacts of radiation leaking from the crippled Japanese Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and about the future of nuclear power.

Here, he discusses the dilemma of nuclear power as a technology that is continually improving, but which remains in the hands of those who are incapable of managing it safely.

Theofanous is a professor of chemical and mechanical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara and he has spent decades researching nuclear reactor design and nuclear reactor safety. He quit the nuclear field in disgust though, after seeing one instance after another of institutional rot and incompetence in the nuclear industry and in the nuclear regulators.