Andrey Gagarinsky, Director of Scientific Development Center of Kruchatov Institute

– Today, nuclear energy is by far not the worst in terms of safety

Apr 26 is the 23rd anniversary of the accident at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

The Chernobyl accident has scared humanity a lot. It has shown the peculiarities of nuclear energy and the scale of possible nuclear accidents. Chernobyl has forced people to show more serious attitude towards the use of nuclear energy. Some states have even dismissed nuclear power but most of the nations are doing what they should do: they are improving the safety of their nuclear power plants so as to make such accidents impossible.

The safety system of nuclear power plants has been drastically revised since the Chernobyl accident. Chernobyl gave birth to safety culture and urged people to act more quickly so as to safe nuclear industry, Today, almost 50 countries who don’t have nuclear power plants say that they are going to develop nuclear energy. I don’t mention the 2/3 of the countries who already have nuclear power plants.

This is a natural process: humankind is already short of energy and this shortage will grow. And for the moment we have no better source of energy than nuclear power. Of course, all power generating technologies have certain risks but nuclear energy is by far not the worst of them.