Fukushima

Such a summit would have been unthinkable a dozen years ago in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, but a warming planet creating a need to phase out fossil fuels and war in Ukraine laying bare a dependence on Russian energy have turned the tables over the past half decade.

The head of the U.N. atomic agency told local Japanese representatives at a meeting in Fukushima on Wednesday that the ongoing discharge of treated radioactive wastewater at the ruined nuclear power plant has met safety standards and that any restrictions on products from the region are “not scientific.”

Japan on Monday marked 13 years since a massive earthquake and tsunami hit the country’s northern coasts. Nearly 20,000 people died, whole towns were wiped out and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was destroyed, creating deep fears of radiation that linger today.

After years of nuclear detonations in the Marshall Islands, fallout and forced relocations of communities began a ripple effect: Many Indigenous Marshallese people who had relied on subsistence farming and fishing for 4,000 years suddenly couldn’t trust the safety of their food, becoming reliant on imported and processed foods. And those were the lucky ones.

This month marks the 12th anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, when three nuclear reactors in Japan suffered catastrophic meltdowns.

Wedged between the southwestern town of Bridgwater and the Severn estuary is a 430-acre site where some of the U.K.'s future electricity hopes are pinned.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has ordered preparations for all of the country's three remaining nuclear reactors to continue operating until mid-April. The move marks another hiccup in the country's long-running plan to end the use of atomic energy.

No radiation was released from a Russian attack at Europe's biggest nuclear power plant in Ukraine and firefighters have extinguished a blaze at the facility, U.N. and Ukrainian officials said on Friday, March 4, 2022, as Russian forces pressed their campaign to cripple the country despite global condemnation.

Renewable energy skeptics argue that because of their variability, wind and solar cannot be the foundation of a dependable electricity grid. But the expansion of renewables and new methods of energy management and storage can lead to a grid that is reliable and clean.

Japan's new prime minister on Sunday, October 17, 2021, said the planned mass disposal of wastewater stored at the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant cannot be delayed, despite concerns from local residents.

Objective, science-based monitoring is the key to safely carrying the planned release of treated but still radioactive water at Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, a key International Atomic Energy Agency official said on Thursday, September 9, 2021.

Japan’s government adopted an interim plan on Tuesday that it hopes will win support from fishermen and other concerned groups for a planned release into the sea of treated but still radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant.

The Ontario Clean Air Alliance wants an interim moratorium on the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station’s operation, citing the potential for a nuclear meltdown.

The operator of Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant said on Friday, September 28, 2018, that much of the radioactive water stored at the plant isn't clean enough and needs further treatment if it is to be released into the ocean.

Radioactive contamination from a nuclear power-plant disaster in Japan never reached unsafe levels in the north Pacific Ocean for either marine life or human health, scientist says.