Anti-nuclear meeting offers lessons learned from Fukushima via Business Recorder

Rebecca Harms, a European Parliament member from Germany, was braced for severe power shortages on arriving in Japan, with only six of the nation’s 54 nuclear reactors in service, but was shocked to find wasted electricity all over the country.The country, which experienced the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 25 years, “is wasting electricity everywhere,” a heated toilet seats and garish neon signs to large air heaters outside hotel entrances, said Harms, co-president of the Greens in the European Parliament.”It was really astonishing,” said Harms, who is among speakers at a weekend anti-nuclear conference in Yokohama, south of Tokyo.

Her critical observation seems to typify what organisers of the conference want to share with participants in order to deal with various issues including future energy and radioactive contamination after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.After the plant was struck by a magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, a series of blasts and fires triggered the massive release of radioactive material into the environment.

The plant, run by Tokyo Electric Power Co, suffered meltdowns at three of its six reactors.

More than 80,000 residents have been forced to evacuate the area.

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