Are We on the Brink of Burying Nuke Power Forever?

By Harvey Wasserman (about the author) 

This may be the moment history has turned definitively against atomic energy.

 

To be sure:    we are still required to fight hard to bury reactor loan guarantees in the United States.    There are parallel struggles in China, Indian, England, France and South Korea.  

 

The great fear is that until every single reactor on this planet is shut, none of us is really safe from another radioactive horror show.  

 

Thus the moment is clearly marked at Fukushima by three reactors and a radioactive fuel pool still untamed after three months, with the horrific potential to do far more apocalyptic damage than we've seen even to date.

 

That image includes Japanese school children being issued Geiger counters to carry with them 24/7 (http://nukefree.org/japanese-government-give-kids-radiation-monitors-carry-them ).

 

And Fukushima's radiation raining down on the United States, with links to reports of a heightened infant death rate in Seattle http://nukefree.org/janette-sherman-joe-mangano-rise-infant-deaths-pacific-northwest-due-fukushima .  

 

And by countless other on-going disasters and near-misses at reactors everywhere on the planet.    Included is Cooper, in Nebraska, which got zero corporate media coverage as it was nearly flooded and did lose power to its radioactive fuel pool http://nukefree.org/electrical-fire-knocks-out-fuel-pool-nebraska-nuke .  

 

From well-reasoned fear, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Israel and other critical players have announced they will build no more reactors.    Some will start shutting the ones they have.  

 

Japan and Germany are the third and fourth largest economies on Earth.   Japan has long been at the core of the reactor industry.    Germany's economy is the largest in Europe.    Some European nations are rumbling about an alliance to shut the reactors among their nuclear neighbors.

 

All this could be happening merely in reaction to yet another Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.    The corporate media has attempted to induce a coma over Fukushima by simply refusing the cover the on-going disaster.  

 

But the worsening realities are as utterly relentless as they are terrifying.   In the age of the internet, there is simply no way to totally suppress the horror of what is happening to our Earth, especially at its lethal, festering wound at Fukushima.

 

But what truly sets this moment apart is not just the radioactive nightmare.   There have been others.    There will certainly be more.  

 

What's unique about now is the Solartopian flip side.    It is the irrepressible fact that we have finally reached the green-powered tipping point.  

 

For the first time in history, the financial, industrial and trade journals are filled with pithy, number-laden reports declaring the moment has come---and this can not be overemphasized---that solar power is definitively cheaper than nuclear.  

 

It is an epic moment that future economic and technological historians will note as a true turning point.

 

In real terms, Solartopian technology----wind, solar, geothermal, ocean thermal, bio-fuels, wave, current, tidal, efficiency, conservation---has always been cheaper than nukes.

 

The "Peaceful Atom" has always been a creature of subsidies, a happy face painted on the Bomb.    Its true health, safety and environmental costs can never be reliably calculated.  

 

What, after all, will be the true price tag on Fukushima?    How do we begin to calculate the costs in human agony and ecological destruction?

 

Already Japan is being torn apart by who will pay:    the utility (it doesn't have enough assets)http://nukefree.org/tepco-may-go-insolvent , the government (it could go bankrupt) or the victims (who else?).   The only thing certain is this once-powerful industrial nation will never recover.  

 

It's no accident the reactor industry cannot get private capital for new reactor construction, or private liability insurance of real consequence, and cannot solve its waste problems without the federal government taking responsibility---which, in truth, even it cannot do.  

 

The true installment cost of the US reactor fleet can't even be calculated, as much of the liability was dishonestly wiped off the books in the deregulation scam of 1999-2002.

 

What we're left with worldwide is 440 uninsured ticking time bombs, potential Chernobyls and Fukushimas, every one of them.    There are 104 in the US.   The only real question is when the next one will go off and how long it will take to actually hear about it.  

 

Atomic energy also feeds global warming.    Who will account for the enormous heat still rising from Fukushima?    How much did Chernobyl spew?    Carbon emissions come with the mining, milling, enrichment and ultimate disposal of radioactive fuel, not to mention the building and dismantling of the reactors themselves.

 

For yet another summer, nukes in France, Alabama and elsewhere must close because the infernal machines that "fight global warming" must shut shy of heating the rivers they use for cooling to 90 degrees Farenheit.    

 

What's peaked now, as Fukushima melts and burns and dumps its radioactive poisons into the air and the oceans and the people of this planet, is one financial reality:    even with all its subsidies, nuclear power can no longer stand in the market place.

 

The first option, of course, has become natural gas, whose price has plummeted.    But the gas boom is based in large part on fracking, an unsustainable environmental disaster.   Its momentum is huge, but so is its threat to the waters we need to survive.  

 

In the long term, the future is with renewables.    They are often subsidized as well.    But the scale is not comparable, and does not fully compensate for the hidden realities of atomic power's uninsurability and its inability to solve its basic waste, health and eco-impacts.  

 

Were the nuclear industry forced to fully insure itself, or were it charged the true cost of its invested capital, or what it does to the planet and the humans who live on it, not a single reactor owner could afford to keep a reactor running for a single day.  

 

Small wonder Wall Street has long been more anti-nuclear than Main Street.

 

The numbers are now easy to find.   WorldWatch has just issued the definitive END OF NUCLEAR by Mycle Schneider, laden with charts, graphs, tables and all the financial data anyone needs to confirm the case http://nukefree.org/worldwatch-institute-mycle-schneider-end-nuclear .    The Rocky Mountain Institute (www.rmi.org) has long had similar material on file and at the tip of Amory Lovins's tongue.

 

Now we see Forbes http://www.ncwarn.org/2007/07/nuclear-power-worst-managerial-disaster/ , the Wall Street Journal http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2011/05/25/hypersolar-renewable-energy/ and the core corporate press conceding the obvious.  

 

In short, the bottom line has now become the bottom line. Reactor costs have doubled and tripled in the past few years even before Fukushima.   Green energy costs continue to plummet.

 

The last barrier is that to understand how a Solartopian economy works, you have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

 

Base-load power is readily available from geo-thermal, bio-fuels and a broad mix.    One does need to balance the various intermittent sources---wind, solar, tidal---to keep the glass full.  

 

But Fukushima has shown that nukes are also intermittent in the worst imaginable way.

 

Any sane for-profit player with the bucks enough to build a new reactor will now put them into renewables.   Witness Google, now investing    $280 million in a fund for installing solar panels on home rooftops, and millions more for undersea links to offshore wind farms.  

 

The dream of a Solartopian future has become the capitalist present.   Germany and Japan would not be committing to a green-powered future if its large corporations---Siemans, Enercon, Mitsubishi, Sharp---whose CEOs have run the numbers and decided nukes are a loser.    And that the real profit center for the long-term energy biz is in green power.

 

What remains for us is to get the government out of the game.    The $36 billion in loan guarantees Obama wants in the 2012    budget must come out.   We need to call the White House and Congress CONSTANTLY until this happens.

 

Then we need to find a way to get the Chinese, Indians, Koreans, Brits and French to join Germany, Japan and the rest of us in a post-nuclear world.  

 

How soon this gets done is up to us.   Our fervent hope---and greatest incentive---is knowing this MUST be done before    the next Fukushima strikes.  

 

Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! GREEN POWER HOUR runs Wednesdays at 8pm EST onwww.talktainmentradio.com (877)932-9766, starting tonight.    He is senior editor of   www.FreePress.org and www.solartopia.org.  

French want to abandon nuclear

June 06, 2011

MORE than three quarters of French people believe the country should follow Germany and withdraw from nuclear energy, a new survey has found.

The Ifop poll of 1,005 adults commissioned by the Journal du Dimanche found 77% supported a gradual shut-down of France's nuclear power plants within 30 years. A fifth of those in favour said it should happen sooner.

Germany announced last month that it would shut down its nuclear plants by 2022 following safety concerns as a result of the Japanese earthquake and the Fukushima radiation leak.

Nuclear represents only 22% of German electricity production, whereas France has 58 reactors that produce 73% of the country's electricity supply, making it the world's second-biggest nuclear power behind the United States.

Green party Europe Ecologie-Les Verts is campaigning for a complete withdrawal and wants the Socialists to do the same before it considers a potential partnership in next year's elections.

Socialist presidential candidate François Hollande has instead suggested cutting France's dependence on nuclear by half, while the French government insists it will not change its direction. 

Nuclear Insanity

by Dr. Vandana Shiva

Global Research, May 25, 2011
Navdanya International - 2011-05-24

Fukushima has raised, once again, the perennial questions about human fallibility and human frailty, about human hubris and man’s arrogance in thinking he can control nature. The earthquakes, the tsunami, the meltdown at Japan’s nuclear power plant are nature’s reminders of her power.
The scientific and industrial revolution was based on the idea that nature is dead, and the earth inert matter. The tragedy in Japan is a wakeup call from Mother Nature — an alarm to tell us she is alive and powerful, and that humans are powerless in her path. The ruined harbours, villages and towns, the ships, aeroplanes and cars tossed away by the angry waves as if they were tiny toys are reminders that should correct the assumption that man can dominate over nature — with technology, tools and industrial infrastructure.

The Fukushima disaster invites us to revisit the human-nature relationship. It also raises questions about the so-called "nuclear renaissance" as an answer to the climate and energy crisis. President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Arjun Makhijani, speaking at Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, said that "nuclear renaissance" would need 300 reactors every week and two-three uranium enrichment plants every year. The spent fuel would contain 90,000 bombs of plutonium per year if separated. Water required would be 10-20 million litres per day.

Following the Fukushima disaster, China, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines are reviewing their nuclear power programmes. As Alexander Glaser, assistant professor in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, observes, "It will take time to grasp the full impact of the unimaginable human tragedy unfolding after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, but it is already clear that the proposition of a global nuclear renaissance ended on that day".

Across India, movements are growing against old and new nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants are proposed at Haripur (West Bengal), Mithi Virdi (Gujarat), Madban (Maharashtra), Pitti Sonapur (Orissa), Chutka (Madhya Pradesh) and Kavada (Andhra Pradesh).

The 9,900 MW Jaitapur nuclear power plant, consisting of six nuclear reactors in Madban village, Ratnagiri district, Maharashtra, will be the world’s largest nuclear power plant if built. French state-owned nuclear engineering firm Areva and Indian state-owned operator Nuclear Power Corporation of India signed a $22-billion agreement in December 2010, to build six nuclear reactors in the presence of Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, and Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister.

In the light of expected surge in orders following the France-India agreement, Areva started to hire 1,000 people a month.

Jaitapur is a seismically sensitive area and is prone to earthquakes. Yet, there is no plan for the disposal of 300 tonnes of nuclear waste that the plant will generate each year. The plant will require about 968 hectares of fertile agricultural land spread over five villages that the government claims is "barren".

Jaitapur is one of many nuclear power plants proposed on a thin strip of fertile coast land of Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts — the estimated combined power generation will be 33,000 MW. This is the region that the Government of India wanted to be declared a world heritage site under the Man and Biosphere programme of Unesco. Villagers of the Konkan region have been protesting against the nuclear plant. They have formed Konkan Bachao Samiti and Janahit Seva Samiti and have refused to accept cheques for the forced land acquisition. Ten gram panchayats have resigned to protest the violation of the 73rd Amendment.

Jaitapur has been put under prohibitory orders and more than five people cannot gather. On April 18, 2011, policemen fired at protesters who were demonstrating against the proposed Nuclear Power Park at Jaitapur. One died and eight others were seriously injured. The 2,800 MW nuclear plant planned at Fatehbad, Haryana, involves the acquisition of 1,503 acre of fertile farmland. Eighty villages are protesting; two farmers have died during protests.

A nuclear power plant is planned in Chutkah, Madhya Pradesh, where 162 villages were earlier displaced by the Bargi dam. Forty-four villages are resisting the nuclear power plant. Dr Surender Gadakar, a physicist and anti-nuclear activist, describes nuclear power as a technology for boiling water that produces large quantities of poisons that need to be isolated from the environment for long durations of time. Plutonium, produced as nuclear waste, has a half life of 240,000 years, while the average life of nuclear reactors is 21 years. There is so far no proven safe system for nuclear waste disposal. Spent nuclear fuel has to be constantly cooled, and when cooling systems fail, we have a nuclear disaster. This is what happened at nuclear reactor 4 at Fukushima.

The focus on fossil fuels, CO2 emissions and climate change suddenly allowed nuclear energy to be offered as "clean" and "safe". But as a technology, nuclear power consumes more energy than it generates if the energy for cooling spent fuel for thousands of years is taken into account. In India, the costs of nuclear energy become even higher because nuclear power plants must grab land and displace people. The Narora nuclear plant in Uttar Pradesh, which is a mere 125 km from Delhi, displaced five villages. In 1993, there was a major fire and near meltdown in Narora.

The highest cost of nuclear energy in India is the destruction of democracy and constitutional rights. Nuclear power must undermine democracy. We witnessed this during the process of signing the US-India Nuclear Agreement. We witnessed it in the "cash for votes" scandal during the no-confidence motion in Parliament. And we witness it wherever a new nuclear power plant is planned. Physicist Sowmya Dutta reminds us that the world has potential for 17 terra watt nuclear energy, 700 terra watt wind energy and 86,000 terra watt of solar energy. Alternatives to nuclear energy are thousand times more abundant and million times less risky. To push nuclear plants after Fukushima is pure insanity.

Dr Vandana Shiva is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust.

Vandana Shiva is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Vandana Shiva

MUST READ: Letter from Japan with GREAT LINKS to help and understand

RISE LIKE TSUNAMIS AFTER THE EARTH QUAKES: An open letter addressing grief, hope and some resources for engaging the healing process.  

[Many thanx to Nuclear Free Virginia for this and many other links.]

Comment: So good!  Pray for the families of Japan!

Greetings, My name is Crystal Uchino. I am writing from my home in the southern prefecture of Nagasaki, Japan. 

A somber dirge continues to play in the hearts of all of us here across Japan in the wake of this earth-shaking, tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis. This trifecta of disasters is truly beyond humbling, it is a living, grotesque and sobering nightmare that will likely haunt the world for much time to come. As the after-effects of both the earthquake and the tsunami continue to be revealed, so grows the depths of the despair and sadness over the magnitude of the situation. Watching events unfold over the news daily in real time delivers new quakes to test the resilience and endurance of our hearts, faith, the depths of our empathy, grief and determination to act. 

The death toll has continued to climb daily as does the number of those now homeless and seeking shelter from a nuclear fallout. Additionally the conditions within the shelters is appearing more and more grim as a result of inadequate infrastructures to provide sufficient food, warmth and sanitation. There continue to be new explosions at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, and large after-shock tremors continue to rock this already shaken nation. All around me, the apocalyptic images we see coming off the news conjure memories of the damage reaped by the atomic bombs dropped here over sixty years ago, as the possibility for a new generation of Hibakusha ("nuclear explosion-affected peoples") emerges as a frightening reality.

Today, it seems that Japan is once again being poised as a great and humble teacher. The festering wound of this crisis serves to underscore, once again, just how much the splitting of the atom remains one of the single most volatile global threats at a personal, community, state, and environmental level. Japan, despite past injuries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and seemingly anti-nuclear principles: non-production, non-possession, and non-introduction of nuclear weapons; has become one of the leaders in nuclear development and production in the world. According to Green Action Japan before the quake, there were 53 nuclear power plants in operation in Japan. 53 nuclear power plants in a small island country notoriously vulnerable to earthquakes and other natural disasters. 

My heart and prayers are with the people of Fukushima and the Tohoku area, as it is they who are now shouldering this horrific burden of teaching so that the world may be reminded of just what a painful and costly responsibility we bear when we allow bad stuff to enter our communities.

Around the globe, everyday people are beginning to awaken to the reality of our fragility and vulnerability surrounding the dangers of all forms of nuclear development. Barely a week has passed since the initial shaking, but as a world we have grown up in ways that we had never hoped to, and with our newly realized maturity we are challenged look ourselves in the face, to grapple with this saddest of lessons, and answer the question of how we will begin to take responsibility for our part in allowing bad stuff to enter our communities, on both the local and global scale.

The desire to help, to affect something in the situation here in Japan is echoing around the world. And while I hear it sounding and resounding all around, the ways in which each of us can tangibly work to affect some immediate relief are just beginning to be known. Still, because I have gotten so many requests from folks for suggestions on how they can support things here I wanted to share some of the initial resources I know of with you. 

These links offer the best grassroots: 

Second Harvest Japan: This group has been working at the community level feeding people in Japan for years.http://www.2hj.org/index.php/eng_home

https://japanvolunteers.wordpress.com/ Great resource page consolidating links to support relief efforts, relevant to folks living in Japan and oversees. It is being updated Daily with new resources as they develop.

Call for Home stay for Earthquake Evacuees (Only for folks currently living in Japan) http://earthdaymoney.org/topics_dt.php?id=391

Translators United for Peace. For those who are bilingual. 日本の原発奴隷――原子力発電所における秘密 http://www.tup-bulletin.org/modules/contents/index.php?content_id=931

A friend of mine once wrote some song lyrics calling for people to RISE LIKE TSUNAMIS AFTER EARTHQUAKES, It is a most hopeful metaphor for me in this time. And today, I received these words in an email from another friend: 

"When Mother Earth speaks, all we can do is listen. But when humans dangerous passion for energy consumption has wreaked such toil on her children、then we must act." The current genpatsu nanmin (“nuclear power refugees”) have translated the reality of nuclear development into a language that the world can feel. Humanity is speaking clearly, and I feel as a result of this new communication, tho painful, that so many beautiful, hopeful and inspiring things have also unencomberedly been brought to the surface. I have been so moved by the feelings of sincere and unconditional caring and support that I have received from friends, family, and even strangers this last week, and equally as moved by the demonstrations and vigils manifesting in a multitude of forms that have been erupting with contagious passion all over the world. 

. 

You may think me young, naive, callous or insane to bring up politics in a time like this. But I tell you that I have prayed at the graves of unborn aunts and uncles murdered by atomic bomb disease and I feel entitled to tap into ancestral lessons this week. It is from my vantage point of both proximity and distance from this crisis as a current resident of southern Japan; from my vantage point of both proximity and distance from the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima as the granddaughter of a Nagasaki Hibakusha, that I say with great hope and longing that this darkest of nightmares may serve as a catalyst to once again pump life into the stagnant pools of the anti-nuclear movement, to overflow them so that the energies built and created there may also nourish other movements. To me the words "activist" and "healer" are interchangeable. 

This gravest of tragedies has been an ugly and unsoughtafter vindication of so many under-supported social-justice struggles, most poignantly the anti-nuclear movement, as this eventuality was predicted time and time again and most people sat in silent denial as more and more nuclear power plants were constructed, not just in Japan, but around the world, and so many people sit even now in disbelief, quietly burying their fears as development plans for hundreds of more (albe them "safer") nuclear reactors remain on the discussion tables amongst the grotesque suffering of tens of thousands of displaced peoples. But amongst this cold and dark time also resides new growth. A new spring is just beginning and each day we rise anew, we each are gifted an opportunity to carve out a more sincere definition of accountability, to hold ourselves and each other responsible in new ways. Although our recent wounds are still gaping, still throbbing, the time is now for us to rise like tsunamis after earthquakes and once again recommit ourselves to the healing of the future for the next generation. 

I've spent several days writing and revising this letter, it started out as some brief resource suggestions to friends but morphed into this. I was propelled to keep writing by my own desire to combat the helplessness I feel sitting here, relatively safe, overdosing on miso, kombu, and the news in the southern prefecture of Nagasaki, Japan as coordinated relief efforts have not yet begun accepting volunteers. This time of mourning has given me a good opportunity to re-asses what I hold important and clear out some clutter to make room for the work that lies ahead. So many exciting possibilities for new growth and new cooperation are resonating in the undertones of this funeral song. Those of us living in the overdeveloped world have become so accustomed to the ubiquitous take take take lifestyle that we have forgotten how to stretch our arms, to reach them out, to reach them up! in times when our spirits long to do so the most. This is an open letter to anyone feeling helpless at this time, let us relearn the actions.

It is my hope that some of the things said and resources within these words will be useful to you, please feel free to share them with others. The links below are also great places to continue to sober up through educating ourselves and get inspired for the long term work that is to come.

http://www.nirs.org/ Updates on the situation at Fukushima and simple ways to engage in the movement to end nuclear dependency,http://www.democracynow.org/ sober news reporting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r80RWNY_jXo&feature=player_embedded Anti Atom Demo in Germany. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEuFxgreFPs&feature=related  Anti Atom Demo in France

http://timshorrock.com/?p=1137 A look into the history of "Japans Nuclear Nightmare."

http://neodadakko.blogspot.com/ This is a great sticker. 

A lot of the words flowing from this page have been pretty heavy, so I wanted to share just one small anecdote with you.... This past weekend I went to the post office. And so I`m at the post office right, and there are people lined up out the door of the post office sending bags of rice and boxes of water or fresh vegetables to loved ones up north and I thought to myself..."what kind of apocalypse is this?...no one can get food or water, but they can get mail?!

On that note, I end this letter in solidarity and with hope, taking comfort in the knowing that the same moon shines light down on all of us. Each day I wake up to the budding and flowering of the ume, momo, and the sakura as well are beginning to bloom, as if to say 春が来るよ.

Crystal K. Uchino

Greenpeace on Nuclear Energy; Not needed: NYT/IHT oped

Nuclear Energy Isn't Needed

By KUMI NAIDOO

Published: March 22, 2011

Twelve days are not nearly enough to comprehend the magnitude of the catastrophes that hit Japan starting March 11. From the children who lost parents in the crush of the earthquake, to those whose loved ones are still missing after the tsunami, to the scores of workers risking their health by heroically attempting to stabilize the Fukushima nuclear complex — there is no end to the tragic stories.

Yet in addition to the grief and empathy I feel for the Japanese people, I am beginning to develop another emotion, and that is anger. As we anxiously await every bit of news about the developments at Fukushima, hoping that radiation leaks and discharges will be brought to an end, that the risk of further catastrophe will be averted, and that the Japanese people will have one less nightmare to cope with, governments across the world continue to promote further investment in nuclear power. Just last week, for example, the government of my home country of South Africa announced that it was adding 9,600 megawatts of nuclear energy to its new energy plan.

There are two dangerous assumptions currently parading themselves as fact in the midst of the ongoing nuclear crisis. The first is that nuclear energy is safe. The second is that nuclear energy is an essential element of a low carbon future, that it is needed to prevent catastrophic climate change. Both are false.

Nuclear technology will always be vulnerable to human error, natural disaster, design failure or terrorist attack. What we are seeing at Fukushima right now are failures of the systems. The reactors themselves withstood the earthquake and tsunami, but then the vital cooling systems failed. When the back-up power systems also failed, the reactors overheated, eventually causing the spread of radiation. This is only one example of what can go wrong.

Nuclear power is inherently unsafe and the list of possible illnesses stemming from exposure to the accompanying radiation is horrifying: genetic mutations, birth defects, cancer, leukemia and disorders of the reproductive, immune, cardiovascular and endocrine systems.

While we have all heard of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, the nuclear industry would have us believe these are but isolated events in an otherwise unblemished history. Not so. Over 800 other significant events have been officially reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency — Mayak, Tokaimura, Bohunice, Forsmark to name just a few.

The argument that nuclear energy is a necessary component of a carbon-free future is also false.

Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council have put together a study called “Energy [R]evolution,” which clearly shows that a clean energy pathway is cheaper, healthier and delivers faster results for the climate than any other option. This plan calls for the phase-out of existing reactors around the world and a moratorium on construction of new commercial nuclear reactors.

Furthermore, an energy scenario recently produced by the conservative International Energy Agency highlights the fact that nuclear power is not necessary for lowering greenhouse gas emissions. It shows that even if existing nuclear power capacity could be quadrupled by 2050, the proportion of energy that it provided would still be below 10 percent globally. This would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by less than 4 percent. The same amount of money, invested in clean, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar could have a much greater impact on lowering global warming.

Nuclear energy is an expensive and deadly distraction from the real solutions. “Fuel-free” sources of energy do not generate international conflicts (as I write I cannot help but think of Libya), they do not “run dry” and they do not spill. There are initial financial investments to be made, but in time the price of renewables will decline as technological advances and market competition drive the costs down. Furthermore, implemented wisely, a green, nuclear and fossil-free future will create a host of safe, new jobs.

As international organizations like Greenpeace join Japan’s Citizens Nuclear Information Center in an appeal to the Japanese government for improved evacuation plans and other protective measures for people still within the 30-kilometer exclusion zone; as the issue of food and water contamination continues to grow in Asia; as iodine tablets continue to sell out around the globe and people in places as far away from Japan as Los Angeles are on high alert for “radioactive plumes” — it is imperative that as citizens of the world we continue to voice our opposition to further investment in nuclear energy. We need a truly clean energy revolution now.

Kumi Naidoo is executive director of Greenpeace International.