Dateline: Mar 5

This week Dateline has a special edition, delving into the nuclear debate, examining if the risks of producing nuclear power, and living with its consequences, are worth it.

Two years after the catastrophic nuclear meltdown, Dateline revisits Fukushima, the site of Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, and investigates how people in the area are continuing to live with the disaster’s legacy. Video journalist Adrian Brown travels into the Exclusion Zone surrounding the crippled Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, one of the most contaminated places on earth. Despite high radiation levels some people have refused to leave.

“The lies that nuclear power is safe have been blown away, and if they decide to restart other plants the danger that was faced in Fukushima will be faced all over Japan. It’s clear that it’s not safe,” Masami Yoshizawa tells Dateline at his farm inside the Exclusion Zone.

Mr Yoshizawa, like many others who have lost their livelihood, is critical of the Japanese government and the operator of the plant, over their handling of the crisis. There has been little reconstruction in the area and more than 300,000 people who lost their homes are still living in temporary housing, unsure of how long they will remain there. In other areas further away from the plant, people are learning to live with higher levels of radiation but no one knows what the long term health impact will be on those who remain.

While the Fukushima disaster in Japan has reignited the debate on nuclear energy in a country so reliant on it, the United Kingdom is struggling to find solutions to deal with its growing stockpile of nuclear waste.

Dateline travels to England’s scenic Lakes District – an area known for its natural beauty and home to England’s largest National Park – where residents are fighting a battle to stop it from becoming a nuclear waste dump.

Cumbria County has so far been the only place to put up its hand as a potential site for a long-term high level waste facility in Britain, but the controversial proposal to bury radioactive material underneath the idyllic countryside has faced fierce opposition. Video journalist Aaron Thomas is there as angry residents concerned about the safety and environmental impact of storing the hazardous waste in such a pristine environment, go head to head with those pushing for the plan and the economic opportunities it offers.

Meanwhile in Finland, Dateline visits the only underground high level radioactive waste dump under construction anywhere in the world, and what may be the ultimate nuclear storage solution. The Finns are building a giant bunker to store their nuclear leftovers for the next hundred thousand years – an engineering feat that has been designed to survive the next Ice Age. The ground-breaking project has the support of the local community, and is being closely watched by nuclear industries around the world.

9.30pm Tuesday 5 March on SBS ONE