You're reading: Poll: Fukushima accident changed Russian attitudes to nuclear energy

MOSCOW - Twenty-five percent of Russians surveyed by the Levada Center in February said their attitude to nuclear energy worsened in the past year.

The majority of the respondents (60%) said their attitude to nuclear energy has not changed and 6% said it has even improved.

The respondents said their attitude to nuclear energy has changed (20% of the respondents surveyed) said the main reason for that are the events at nuclear power plants and on nuclear submarines in Russia. However, the majority of the respondents (64%) said their attitude to nuclear energy has changed due to the Fukushima accident in Japan in 2011.

Forty-five percent of the respondents said they feel compassion for the people of Japan, whereas 38% expressed concerns that the radiation from the Fukushima accident will affect Russia

Four percent of the respondents said they see the Fukushima accident as punishment to the people of Japan for insulting Russian national holy places. Eleven percent of the respondents reported having no emotions about the Fukushima accident.

On Sunday, the people of Japan remembered those killed as a result of the events that occurred in the country on March 11, 2011, when radiation leaks from the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant and a nuclear catastrophe threat made the Japanese authorities to evacuate the population of 11 municipalities of the prefecture Fukushima. Some 160,000 people are still living far from their homes.

The re-building of the areas hit by the quake and tsunami and the clearing of the debris still continue in Japan.