a nuclear power plant exploding on live TV is an indelible image. Even at 8000 miles, it burns into the retina. Suddenly the dream of cheap, clean low carbon energy powering mankind into the future seems to look like a Faustian bargain we should have refused. Is an evil genie out of the bottle?  The anti-nuclear lobby has been quick to predict the sudden death of an industry that was only just recovering after Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl. Meltdown: a powerful word, conjuring up The China Syndrome, the ultimate disaster movie, which raises the prospect of a complete meltdown within a reactor setting off an uncontrollable nuclear chain reaction. The invisibility of radiation lends such ideas a unique potency. and who can blame the Japanese for regarding it with particular horror?  The future of nuclear power must now hang in the balance because at such times science and sense part company. Yesterday parts of Tokyo looked like a ghost town because of what broadcasters in hushed tones called  raised levels of radiation , even though these turned out to be the equivalent of a tenth of a dental x-ray.  The struggle to contain the disaster at Fukushima is desperately worrying but are we in danger of losing our perspective? More than 11,000 people are missing presumed dead, following Japan s worst earthquake. Even Chernobyl, a catastrophic explosion at a clapped out death-trap of a reactor that spewed huge plumes of radiation for days, was ultimately responsible for no more than a few hundred deaths, fewer than are killed in coal mines every year. Modern reactors are not only incomparably safer. They use less fuel and generate little waste.  My father, a nuclear physicist, died last month content in the knowledge that after a generation out in the cold, nuclear power was back on the global agenda. Some 60 reactors are under construction around the world and 350 more are planned. Calling a halt would be like banning all trains after a rail crash. There are certainly lessons for Japan, a country uniquely vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis. Not building nears faultlines or the coast looks sensible, though it s easy to read