Anti-nuclear movement

[73] Costs resulting from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are likely to exceed 12 trillion yen ($100 billion)[74] and the clean up effort to decontaminate affected areas and decommission the plant is estimated to take 30 to 40 years.

Excluding accidents, the standard amount of high-level radioactive waste is claimed to be manageable (UK has produced just 2150 m3 during its 60 years nuclear program), with the Geological Society of London alleging that it can be effectively recycled and stored safely.

A collaboration between the European Union (EU), India, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and the United States, the project aims to make a transition from experimental studies of plasma physics to electricity-producing fusion power plants.

A French association including about 700 anti-nuclear groups, Sortir du nucléaire (Get Out of Nuclear Energy), claimed that ITER was a hazard because scientists did not yet know how to manipulate the high-energy deuterium and tritium hydrogen isotopes used in the fusion process.

[91] However, the development of newer, more reliable and efficient particle accelerators also fuels the proposals for subcritical reactors with a spallation neutron source being used for nuclear transmutation of "legacy" waste and/or power generation.

[111] Greenpeace advocates a reduction of fossil fuels by 50% by 2050 as well as phasing out nuclear power, contending that innovative technologies can increase energy efficiency, and suggests that by 2050 most electricity will come from renewable sources.

Fuelled by the Three Mile Island accident and the Chernobyl disaster, the anti-nuclear power movement mobilised political and economic forces which for some years "made nuclear energy untenable in many countries".

[173][174] In June 2007, 4,000 local residents, students and anti-nuclear activists took to the streets in the city of Kudzus in Indonesia's Central Java, calling on the Government to abandon plans to build a nuclear power plant there.

[190] In May 2010, some 25,000 people, including members of peace organizations and 1945 atomic bomb survivors, marched for about two kilometers from downtown New York to the United Nations headquarters, calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

[195][196] In December 2010, some 10,000 people (mainly fishermen, farmers and their families) turned out to oppose the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in the Maharashtra state of India, amid a heavy police presence.

[198] In January 2011, five Japanese young people held a hunger strike for more than a week, outside the Prefectural Government offices in Yamaguchi City, to protest against the planned Kaminoseki Nuclear Power Plant near the environmentally sensitive Seto Inland Sea.

[citation needed] In India, environmentalists, local farmers and fishermen have been protesting for months over the planned Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project six-reactor complex, 420 km south of Mumbai.

Protests have escalated following Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster and during two days of violent rallies in April 2011, a local man was killed and dozens were injured.

Company workers, students, and parents with children rallied across Japan, "venting their anger at the government's handling of the crisis, carrying flags bearing the words 'No Nukes!'

[216] Since the March 2011 Japanese Fukushima nuclear disaster, "populations around proposed Indian NPP sites have launched protests that are now finding resonance around the country, raising questions about atomic energy as a clean and safe alternative to fossil fuels".

The PIL specifically asks for the "staying of all proposed nuclear power plants till satisfactory safety measures and cost-benefit analyses are completed by independent agencies".

The women said they feel an enormous sense of crisis after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011, which demonstrated the destructive power of radiation in the disruption of human lives, environmental pollution, and food contamination.

[224] Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann expects anti-nuclear petition drives to start in at least six European Union countries in 2012 in an effort to have the EU abandon nuclear power.

Under the EU's Lisbon Treaty, petitions that attract at least one million signatures can seek legislative proposals from the European Commission, which would pave the way for anti-nuclear activists to garner support.

Ashes to Honey (ミツバチの羽音と地球の回転, Mitsubashi no haoto to chikyū no kaiten), (literally "Humming of Bees and Rotation of the Earth") is a Japanese documentary directed by Hitomi Kamanaka and released in 2010.

[246] Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) was a musical group founded in 1979 by Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt, and John Hall, following the Three Mile Island nuclear accident.

On 23 September 1979, almost 200,000 people attended a large anti-nuclear rally staged by MUSE on the then-empty north end of the Battery Park City landfill in New York.

Anti-nuclear activities were among the reasons, but the primary motivations were the overestimation of future demand for electricity and steadily increasing capital costs, which made the economics of new plants unfavorable.

[269] As of 2011, countries such as Australia, Austria, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Israel, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Norway remain opposed to nuclear power.

In The War Against the Atom (Basic Books, 1982) Samuel MacCracken of Boston University argued that in 1982, 50,000 deaths per year could be attributed directly to non-nuclear power plants, if fuel production and transportation, as well as pollution, were taken into account.

"[287] Stewart Brand has apologized for his past anti-nuclear stance in the 2010 book Whole Earth Discipline, saying that "Greens caused gigatons of carbon dioxide to enter the atmosphere from the coal and gas burning that went ahead instead of nuclear".

[289] In April 2007, Dan Becker, Director of Global Warming for the Sierra Club, declared, "Switching from dirty coal plants to dangerous nuclear power is like giving up smoking cigarettes and taking up crack.

"[290] James Lovelock criticizes holders of such a view: "Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media."

[292] Subsequently, he has harshly condemned the anti-nuclear movement, writing that it "has misled the world about the impacts of radiation on human health ... made [claims] ungrounded in science, unsupportable when challenged and wildly wrong."

He singled out Helen Caldicott for, he wrote, making unsourced and inaccurate claims, dismissing contrary evidence as part of a cover-up, and overstating the death toll from the Chernobyl disaster by a factor of more than 140.

169,000 people attended an anti-nuclear protest in Bonn , West Germany , on 14 October 1979, following the Three Mile Island accident . [ 1 ]
Anti-nuclear demonstration in Colmar , northeastern France, on 3 October 2009
Anti- Nuclear Power Plant Rally following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster on 19 September 2011 at Meiji Shrine complex in Tokyo , Japan
Women Strike for Peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis
Atmospheric 14 C Bomb pulse , corresponding to atmospheric nuclear weapons tests , New Zealand [ 24 ] and Austria . [ 25 ] The New Zealand curve is representative for the Southern Hemisphere, the Austrian curve is representative for the Northern Hemisphere. Atmospheric nuclear weapon tests almost doubled the concentration of 14 C in the Northern Hemisphere. [ 26 ]
Protest in Amsterdam against the nuclear arms race between the U.S./NATO and the Soviet Union, 1981
The 18,000 km 2 expanse of the Semipalatinsk Test Site (indicated in red), which covers an area the size of Wales . The Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk from 1949 until 1989 with little regard for their effect on the local people or environment. The full impact of radiation exposure was hidden for many years by Soviet authorities and has only come to light since the test site closed in 1991. [ 49 ]
Following the 2011 Japanese Fukushima nuclear disaster , authorities shut down the nation's 54 nuclear power plants. As of 2013, the Fukushima site remains highly radioactive , with some 160,000 evacuees still living in temporary housing, and some land will be unfarmable for centuries. The difficult cleanup job will take 40 or more years, and cost tens of billions of dollars. [ 56 ] [ 57 ] However it has also been criticised that the initial decontamination target of the Japanese government to of 5 mSv has been abandoned in favour of a plan to limit the additional radiation dosage to less than 1 mSv increasing the expenses, the radiological necessity of this is disputed. [ 58 ]
The abandoned city of Prypiat, Ukraine , following the April 1986 Chernobyl disaster . The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is in the background.
President Jimmy Carter leaving the Three Mile Island accident for Middletown, Pennsylvania , 1 April 1979
Anti-nuclear protest on 14 October 1979 in Bonn , capital city of West Germany
Three renewable energy sources: solar energy , wind power , and hydroelectricity
The 150 MW Andasol Solar Power Station is a commercial parabolic trough solar thermal power plant, located in Spain . The Andasol plant uses tanks of molten salt to store solar energy so that it can continue generating electricity even when the sun isn't shining. [ 96 ]
Photovoltaic SUDI shade is an autonomous and mobile station in France that provides energy for electric vehicles using solar energy.
Members of Nevada Desert Experience hold a prayer vigil during the Easter period of 1982 at the entrance to the Nevada Test Site .
Protest in Bonn against the deployment of Pershing II missiles in Europe, 1981
Demonstration against French nuclear testing in 1995 in Paris
Demonstration in Lyon , France, in the 1980s against nuclear tests
On 12 December 1982, 30,000 women held hands around the 6 miles (9.7 km) perimeter of the base, in protest against the decision to site American cruise missiles there.
Anti-nuclear protest in 1979 following the Three Mile Island accident
A scene from the 2007 Stop EPR ( European Pressurised Reactor ) protest in Toulouse , France
Anti-nuclear protest near nuclear waste disposal centre at Gorleben in Northern Germany, on 8 November 2008
Anti-nuclear march from London to Geneva, 2008
Start of anti-nuclear march from Geneva to Brussels, 2009
KETTENreAKTION! in Uetersen, Germany
Anti-nuclear demonstration in Munich, Germany , March 2011
Eight of the seventeen operating reactors in Germany were permanently shut down following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster
Buddhist monks of Nipponzan-Myōhōji protest against nuclear power near the Diet of Japan in Tokyo on 5 April 2011.
Human chain against nuclear plant in Turkey on 17 April 2011
Castor demonstration in Dannenberg, Germany, November 2011
Protest at Neckarwestheim, Germany, 11 March 2012
Anti-nuclear protesters in Taipei
Anti-nuclear protesters shot with water cannons in Taiwan
Anti-nuclear demonstrations near Gorleben , Lower Saxony, Germany, 8 May 1996
Montage of film stills from the International Uranium Film Festival
U.S. and USSR/Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles, 1945–2005
UN vote on adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons on 7 July 2017
Yes
No
Did not vote
U.S. President Barack Obama with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev after signing the New START treaty in Prague, 2010
Stewart Brand wearing a shirt bearing the radioactive trefoil symbol with the caption "Rad."
Stewart Brand at a 2010 debate, "Does the world need nuclear energy?" [ 275 ]