The UEA Has Announced The Appointment Of The Country's First Professor Of Environmental Risk Assessment

Interview with Dr Lewis Roberts as he prepares to take on a new role at the University of East Anglia.

Previously Director of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, Dr Lewis Roberts is appointed Wolfson Professor of Environmental Risk at the University of East Anglia. Dr Roberts is shown walking past a building and entering a door. He is interviewed by Anglia TV reporter Owen Spencer-Thomas following the news of his appointment. View of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell where Dr Roberts has been heading projects relating to nuclear power and non-nuclear environmental issues. He is also Director of Nirex which advises on the disposal of nuclear waste and has been considering Elstow in Bedfordshire as a potential dumping site. As the post at UEA will offer Dr Roberts new academic freedom, the reporter wonders whether he will he become more a guardian of the people and less an apologist for the nuclear industry. Dr Roberts is asked whether he will now be poacher turned gamekeeper? In his response he does not recognise those roles and says a university’s role is to be a critic and to apply rigorous scientific standards, as at Harwell. Regarding Nirex, he clarifies that no decision has been made regarding nuclear waste disposal and Elstow is one of the potential sites worthy of assessment. Over exterior and interior images of Sizewell power station in Suffolk, the reporter asks how accurately have the risks there been calculated? Dr Roberts replies that the effort devoted to the safety case at Sizewell almost speaks for itself, He says enormous engineering effort has gone into showing that the risks associated with a nuclear power station of that sort are some of the lowest in industrial history. This short video was made to be shown in a news story on Anglia Television early evening news / magazine programme About Anglia.

Keywords

Risk; Risk management; Nuclear power; Nuclear energy; Nuclear waste; Universities

Additional Description

Filmed at Harwell, Oxfordshire on news of the new appointment 1985 when Dr Roberts was still working at Harwell before taking up the post at UEA in 1986?