Fukushima fallout: time to quit nuclear power altogether

Experience in northern Japan illustrates that even incremental investment in nuclear power threatens human civilization. The Fukushima disaster should once and for all drive global society away from nuclear power, and toward renewable energy.

In August, just months following the tsunami-induced crisis at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, the 2011 World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs gathered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two Japanese cities destroyed in 1945 by atom bombs, becoming forever linked to the birth of nuclear weapons and the nuclear age. The world conference was formed in 1995 to work toward a nuclear-weapon ban and foster solidarity and support for A-bomb survivors and victims of nuclear disasters.

A few of the 70,000 victims of the Fukushima disaster joined us atand Nagasaki – should once and for all drive global society firmly down a nuclear-free energy path.

Lester R. Brown is a US environmental analyst, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, and president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Yul Choi is founder and president of the Korea Green Foundation. He was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1995 for the movement against toxic and nuclear contamination.