80 years since the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Tom Heap and Helen Czerski ask how our relationship with nuclear power has evolved.At 8.15 on the morning of the 6th of August 1945 a new era began for this planet. For the first time humankind had the power not just to exploit or damage nature, but to destroy it utterly.Tom and Helen are joined by Mark Lynas, author of Six Minutes to Winter: Nuclear War and How to Avoid It and by Professor Timothy Mousseau of the University of South Carolina, a biologist who has studied the environmental impact of the nuclear disasters at Chernobyl and Fukushima. Also in the studio is Dr Fiona Rayment, President of the Nuclear Institute.Producer: Alasdair CrossAssistant Producer: Toby FieldSpecial thanks to Archie McWatt of the University of the West of EnglandRare Earth is produced in association with the Open University
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A Whale's Life
A ban on commercial hunting for whales came into force 40 years ago. Tom Heap and Helen Czerski look back on the whaling industry with one of the last of Shetland's whalers and ask if our largest mammals have bounced back from the extinction that so many species were close to reaching.They're joined by Jayne Pierce of the South Georgia Heritage Trust, the marine biologist and author of Eat, Poop, Die, Joe Roman and by linguist Inbal Arnon. Joe talks about his latest study for Whale and Dolphin Conservation which reveals the importance of whales in moving nutrients around the ocean while Inbal talks about her work comparing how whales and human babies learn to communicate. Jayne discusses this weekend's festival in Dundee which commemorates Scotland's role in the whaling industry and marks the launch of the Whaler's Memory Bank, a project to capture the voices of the last of the men who spent the British winter in the Antarctic capturing and processing the whales that found their way into our margarines and military hardware until the 1960s. Special thanks to Gibbie Fraser, Helen Balfour and baby Idris.Producer: Alasdair CrossRare Earth is produced in association with the Open University
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Metals and Minerals
The transition to an economy based on renewable energy and electric cars needs huge quantities of materials like copper and rare earth metals. Sourcing them can be a problem. Mining damages the surrounding landscape and many of the materials come from unstable regions with poor records on child labour and environmental regulation. Are there alternative materials or do we simply need to consume less? Tom Heap and Helen Czerski investigate.Producer: Emma CampbellRare Earth is produced in collaboration with the Open University
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Powering Our Robot Overlords
Datacentres are big business, and vast numbers of them are being built around the world. In the UK, Amazon has announced plans to invest £8bn over the next five years building new datacentres, £3bn has been spent in the UK by Amazon’s cloud computing business since 2020 and Google is spending millions on a new centre in Hertfordshire. All this data handling is necessary because we're storing more of it and making more complex AI internet searches. The energy cost of this shift is so huge that the big tech companies are commissioning their own nuclear power stations. Each data centre requires energy to run and vast quantities of water to cool it. Both have significant environmental costs, particularly in the hottest and driest regions. Google's greenhouse gas emissions have increased by nearly 50% in the past five years, largely due to the energy demands of Artificial Intelligence.Tom Heap and Helen Czerski ask if we really need to handle all this data. Are there more efficient ways for us to store and search or should we be coming up with more efficient data centres which exploit renewable energy resources and cool themselves naturally with seawater or Arctic ice?To answer these big questions for our internet future they're joined by Tom Jackson, Professor of Information and Knowledge Management at Loughborough University Business School, Aurora Gomez Delgado from the campaign group Tu Nube Seca Mi Río (Your Cloud is Drying My River) and Mark Bjornsgaard from the data centre company, Deep Green.Producer: Alasdair CrossRare Earth is produced in association with the Open University
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Is Net Zero a toxic brand?
In 2008 the UK made an all-party legally-binding commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Since then the consensus has broken down and analysts doubt that current government policy has any chance of reaching that goal. Tom Heap, Helen Czerski and an expert panel stress-test net zero. Is it still achievable? Is it even politically possible in a world of trade wars, Trump's anti-environment agenda and the rise of Reform?Producer: Emma CampbellRare Earth is produced in association with the Open University
Environmental journalist Tom Heap and physicist Helen Czerski tackle major stories about our environment and wildlife, celebrate the wonder of nature and meet the people determined to keep it wonderful.
UK