Abstract: To learn about the knowledge of nuclear emergency cognized by college students, we used self-designed questionnaires to investigate 342 college students in university. The scores of nuclear emergency related knowledge provided in schools are low (45.6±11.3 points), as only 19.30%. With no regard to census register, the nuclear emergency knowledge level and concern about the Japanese nuclear leakage accident are different among different ages, genders, and majors. With no consideration of ages, the genders, majors, and the census registers have different influences on students’ knowledge of the distribution of nuclear power plants in China. It shows that different genders and census registers, different levels of attention to nuclear accidents. For levels of interest in school nuclear emergency training, there is also significant difference in ages and census registers. Some effective measures should be taken to improve the knowledge of college students’ nuclear emergency knowledge, so they can adopt correct self-help methods in case of nuclear accidents.

Key words: nuclear emergency, nuclear knowledge, college students, research