Radiation is something that the general public doesn’t know what to think. When I asked my friends what effect the word “radiation” had on them, most of them said no effect, with one person saying it makes him happy (I think he was just trying to screw with my data pool though). Then I asked about the word “nuclear” and they said it made them feel a lot more uncomfortable than radiation. Then, I tried to ask more questions and nobody replied, obviously done with my obnoxious mind games.

The only thing I can draw from this is that it’s likely that 16-year-olds in Deep Cove are more afraid of nuclear stuff than radiation. That’s something I probably could have guessed but it’s nice to have some not-so-scientific data to go along with it. This probably has a lot to do with the world we live in and how we’ve been brought up and where we’ve been brought up. If you asked a 16-year-old in Japan what they thought about those words, would they have a different answer? Would they have been shaped positively by how nuclear power has powered their country, or more shaped by the nuclear disasters that have affected their childhoods?

According to a study done by Yale University, male students that live near the nuclear fallout areas in Japan still have a high confidence in nuclear power and believe in the efficiency of the power source. This is compared to female students of the same areas, who fear nuclear power more than their male counterparts. The girls say they’re worried about the environment in the cases of nuclear fallout, which is something that does not worry the boys.

The same study also states that there is a public fear about cleanup, and moving the contaminated soil and materials. They public is worried about crop contamination, which is a very close to home issue for a lot of Japanese people. This shows that people most fear what will affect them directly.

Since the Fukushima disaster, the entire world has become timider towards the idea of nuclear power, with countries like Germany even saying they plan to phase out their nuclear programs. This attitude, however, has been around for a very long time. In The China Syndrome, which takes place before both the Church Rock and Chernobyl incidents. people were already uneasy towards the idea of nuclear power. The public in the movie already wants the power plants turned off, even though there was only one record of a nuclear reactor having any sort of accident at the time.

I believe that this proves that our fear is controlled by events, and exposure. The more fear we are exposed to, the more fear we have. This is explained by attitudes of the Japanese people and the global public towards the Fukushima incident.