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Growing Nuclear Crisis In Japan

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We look at the growing potential of a nuclear crisis in Japan.

Jane Clayson in for Tom Ashbrook

People carry heat blankets as they leave a radiation emergency scanning center in Koriyama, Japan. (AP)
People carry heat blankets as they leave a radiation emergency scanning center in Koriyama, Japan. (AP)

A nuclear crisis grows in Japan.

New reports of explosions, fire, fuel rods, malfunctioning equipment and dangerous levels of radiation — all terrifying.

It’s a nightmare scenario for a country that lived through the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And then there are the flashbacks to Three Mile Island. To Chernobyl.

We’ll talk to top experts on what’s happening now in the nuclear plants in Northeast Japan and look at what still might unfold. Later in the hour, we'll look at the future of nuclear power in the US.

This hour On Point: Japan’s nuclear crisis up to the minute.
- Jane Clayson

Guests:

Jonathan Soble, Financial Times Tokyo correspondent

Ellen Vancko, Nuclear Energy & Climate Change Project Manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists

Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, started in 2007 by a bipartisan group of senators. Since 2001, Grumet has directed the National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP), a group of 20 energy experts that make energy policy recommendations.

John Boice, radiation epidemiologist and professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University.

Charles Forsberg, research scientist in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and executive director at the MIT Nuclear Fuel Cycle Project.

This program aired on March 15, 2011.

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