Original scientific paper
ATTITUDES TOWARDS NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS:FROM IGNORANCE TO CRITIQUE?
Ognjen Čaldarović
; Faculty of Philosophy, Zagreb
Abstract
The article is interpreting a part of the results of the research made in June 1992 on a sample of Zagreb and Rijeka University student population, the work done for the project of „Social and Environmental Aspects of the Development“. Two dimensions of nuclear power plants are being discussed - general attitude towards this type of plants and attitudes of the examined population towards the possibilities of a catastrophical accident in nuclear plant. The attitudes of the examined population can be grouped around several basic orientations (ideas). Firstly, the configuration of attitudes stressing that nuclear power plants are superfluous and that in Croatia there are other sources of power are being emphasized. Then, the types of opinions on acceptability of nuclear power are being discussed - the opinions stress that the choice is possible only after other, less dangerous and cheaper ways of producing power have been studied. Thirdly, the least present are the attitudes centered around supporting the option of the nuclear power plants in Croatia.
The reactions of the examined population to the possibility of an accident in the nuclear plant can be grouped to several typical patterns. On one hand, there is the rational behaviour marked by predictable and expected forms of behaviour, while on the other hand more panicky reactions are overemphasized. Due to utter improbability of and personal inexperience in the situations about which the examined population was to give the opinion, the above division to groups should be taken with due reservations.
Keywords
nuclear power plant; accident in nuclear plant; electric power production; attitudes towards power production; reactions to the accidents in power plants
Hrčak ID:
138904
URI
Publication date:
15.1.1993.
Visits: 1.963 *