The earthquake in Japan has devastated a nation and horrified the watching world. The on-going crisis at the Fukushima nuclear facility has been the catalyst for renewed debate over the safety of employing such energy production methods.

It is a polarising debate. Fears about the negative impact of plants are well-founded. The disaster at Chernobyl remains etched into the collective global memory and the consequences of it are still being felt today. Greenpeace puts the estimate of total deaths due to Chernobyl at around 200,000. Most of the men who worked to contain the crisis later died and scientists believe that it may be several centuries before the evacuated ghost towns around the plant will be fit for human habitation. Any successful terrorist attack on such an facility, apparently an idea postulated during planning 9/11, could be catastrophic. Nuclear facilities are government-insured as private companies consider the risks too large to take on.

Balanced against that, are other considerations. In the UK, three quarters of all energy is produced by fossil fuels, which will one day run out. Alternative energy sources are vital to the continuation of our energy-consuming world. Unlike fossil fuels, there are ‘no major concerns over availability of uranium’ according to the Sustainable Development Committee.

Many within the industry defend the relative safety of nuclear energy. Ian Hore-Lacy, a Christian who worked at the World Nuclear Association, claims that the waste generated is not ‘uniquely hazardous’. Dr W. Pollard, an Episcopal priest and fellow of the American Nuclear Society takes a more extreme line and argues that the discovery of nuclear capability just prior to fossil fuels running out is ‘marvellously providential’ and that it can be used with ‘essentially no adverse effect upon the environment’.

The disaster at Fukushima has been defended on the grounds that it withstood one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history. Moreover, proponents of nuclear power point out that far more people die per year in accidents relating to the production of fossil fuels, as the annual death toll associated with coal-fired energy production testifies. Sir David King, the Government’s former Chief Scientific Adviser has said of Fukushima, ‘As far as we know, not one person has died from radiation. Let me put that in context - in the same week, 30 coal miners died. Generating electricity from coal is far more dangerous.’

Christian responses to nuclear energy are wide-ranging. On the one hand there are ‘Green’ Christians who claim that nuclear energy is ‘severely flawed’; on the other are those like Hore-Lacy who criticise Green Christians as being too pagan in nature, too concerned with the earth and not concerned with the fact that humans are the ‘apex’ of God’s creation for whom the earth and all its resources were created.

Such arguments aside, the waste generated by the plants is undeniably a major cause for concern for all involved. No government has yet formulated a long-term strategy for disposing of it safely. If the neighbour we are commanded to love is our neighbour in time, as well as space, how can our attitude to nuclear waste be reconciled?

Are we not reaping all the benefits today and leaving tomorrow’s generations to live with the consequences?

We are called to be good stewards of the earth and to exercise our dominion over it in a responsible way so that our children might enjoy the same environment we do. Nuclear energy is not a clear cut debate, there is evidence to suggest that it is both highly dangerous but also safer and more efficient than the alternatives.

What is undeniable is that there is a moral aspect to the debate and we must ensure that when we discuss it we do not think only of ourselves, but also of our neighbours, those whom we live amongst today, and those who will come after us. They should not pay the price for a crisis created by rash and selfish decisions made by today’s generation.

Ellen King is studying politics at Cambridge University.