In each of the courses, the students reached a level that enabled them to maintain a debate during the competition held during at the end of the course. Owing in large part to Fujikawa’s well-constructed topic, the debate proved to be a balanced one, with the result of the debate not overly biased either for or against the proposition.

Perhaps because of their humanities/social sciences background, the students had little background knowledge of radiation. Regarding the storage pool for spent nuclear fuel, for example, a number of students mistakenly thought that the spent fuel was dissolved in the water of the pool (the spent fuel is stored in the form of solid rods). However, because preparing for a debate necessitates clarifying which areas of one’s understanding are lacking, students’ grasp of the subject area gradually improved as the course progressed. During the period of the course various news stories appeared in the press related to nuclear power and NUMO. Students not only responded to this news in class, but also actively gathered information reported in the media, and were able to use such up-to-date information in the debate competition.

Despite the fact that nuclear power was an issue directly related to the provision of energy for their lives, some considered that nuclear energy concerned no more than Fukushima; in other words, their awareness of nuclear power as an issue pertinent to them was low. However, through doing the course, students’ under­standing deepened and they also began to appreciate that the issue was one that directly affected them.

The input from experts was also important for helping students to understand the issues. At the beginning of the course, there were students who, not understanding fundamental facts—for example, the difference between radial rays and radioac­tivity—practically “gave up thinking” about the issues. However, with the tuition of
the guest speakers and their demonstrations of a cloud chamber (a simple device that allows the decay of radioactive materials to be observed) and other experi­ments, students gradually learned more about the science involved, leading them to become more proactive in thinking about issues for themselves.