~ What do high school students think about nuclear power plants and geological disposal of nuclear waste?~
We conducted the questionnaire targeted at our school's freshmen (15 and 16 years olds).
Students were asked to select one answer from the multiple choices and to write free comments about nuclear power plants and geological disposal of nuclear waste. .
From the simple selective questions, few students seemed to consider nuclear power plants and geological disposal of nuclear waste positively. At first, we thought that this result is due to news reports on Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, but we concluded that the fact that students don’t have enough chances to learn about nuclear power plants generated this result. There are classes at school as a few opportunities to learn about nuclear power plants. But these classes usually cover general energy issues in Japan and introductory electricity supply systems, alongside with thermal power plants and hydropower stations, and don’t cover the issue in detail. Although the Internet and SNS are widely used among teenagers, there are few opportunities for high school students to get the information about nuclear power plants through these media. In the questionnaire about "geological disposal", many students did not know the word "geological disposal" in the first place. Most students were aware of nuclear power plants, but they do not know how to dispose waste at nuclear power plants, and many were even surprised at the idea to bury the waste in the ground. However, 60% of students answered that they wanted to know about "geological disposal" and it seemed that they were somehow interested in learning. Also, 41% of the students answered that high school students should understand the issue. So we concluded that the problem lies in the fact that there are not enough opportunities for students to learn.