Are kids interested in nuclear?

Several of my lectures at PIME conferences were focused on the educational programme 'Energy for Everybody' elaborated by Czech Power Company CEZ, its individual parts, experience acquired during this programme and the results of our work with young generation. Over the past two years we have focused mainly on secondary school students, because this is the age at which people form their opinions and make radical judgements about things and are most likely to be influenced e.g. by anti-nuclear activists. We also take into consideration the fact that young people of this age generally decide about their future professions and we find it important to recruit enough potential future experts for our power plants. We see the young people as future consumers of our electricity and also as the citizens who will decide about the future strategies in the Czech power industry - either as voters or politicians. It is therefore absolutely crucial for us to keep them well-informed and proficient in collecting and analysing relevant data. We have made it our aim to establish a magazine for the most difficult target group - secondary school students and university freshmen. We are lucky that popular science journals for young readers are quite in demand in the Czech Republic. (author)