Following last month's disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northern Japan, the blogosphere is brimming with opinion on whether nuclear energy should be considered a safe and sustainable alternative to fossil fuels.

The incident has largely cooled political support for nuclear power. In early April, Germany became the first country to shut seven of its oldest nuclear plants, and Europe committed to testing all 143 reactors in its 27 member states. China, a nation that accounts for 40% of planned new reactors globally, has decided to halt new projects in a move that could last until 2012.

Over on Carbon Commentary (http://go.nature.com/bSEUb2), Chris Goodall and Mark Lynas offer a reasoned, and rather detailed, perspective on why the whip-lash response to the Fukushima disaster may be short-sighted in the long run. They argue that in addition to being the only non-carbon source of reliable baseload power, nuclear has a pretty good track record, relative to coal, especially when deaths from mining and air pollution are taken into account. These arguments aren't new, but they are perhaps worth reiterating in the current climate. More interesting, however, is the historical perspective provided by Goodall and Lynas, who give a breakdown of the available evidence on the risks of exposure to different types and levels of radiation.

On Climate Progress (http://go.nature.com/9MxZkr), Joe Romm takes Lynas to task over a piece he has penned, in the same vein, for the Los Angeles Times (http://go.nature.com/aU7gcN). The majority of the post is devoted to picking out errors in Lynas's piece, but the top line from Romm is that you can't consider nuclear power without the bottom line. That's the reason why, says Romm, the US nuclear renaissance died before the Japan disaster.

Now that Japan has upgraded the severity of the accident to a 'level 7' on the International Atomic Energy Agency's scale — equal to the 1986 accident at Chernobyl — the debate about the future of nuclear power is only likely to continue.