One Year On, But...

It is 11 March 2012 today, one year from the triple tragedy of the earthquake, tsunami, and the nuclear disaster which together devastated large tracts of the Northeastern part of Japan. About 16,000 persons died, and 3,000 are still missing. Ninety per cent of the deaths were caused by drowning, that is, by the tsunami, which pounded about 530 km of the coast by waves of more than 10 metres high.
Japan is a land of earthquakes, and we know that many of them are accompanied by tsunami. In the old school textbook we read the story of a village headman who saw the sea receding after an earthquake from his house on a hill, and called the villagers to his place by setting fire to the harvested rice of his own. This was based upon what really took place in Wakayama Prefecture in 1855. But we must admit that the possibility of a coming tsunami, and that on such a scale, had slipped out of our mind at the time. Everybody was talking of the fierceness of the earthquake, and fixing their houses or offices badly hit by it.
They were therefore caught almost off-guard by the tsunami, which struck in a matter of half an hour or so, to wash away the towns along the beautiful ria coast in the area together with thousands of their inhabitants, their houses, their all-important fishing ports, making wide areas almost empty.
In addition, there are 344,000 displaced persons still unable to go back to their original houses. Most of them are tsunami regugees, who are prevented from going home as their places of work, schools, or nursing homes for the aged have been lost.
But the most dreadful part of it is that a substantial number of them, and I regret I am not able to give a more accurate figure here, are those who have fled the radioactivity from the Fukushima First Nuclear Power Plant. In their case it is not possible to know how long they have to wait before going home, or if they can go home at all.
At the moment only a few out of the 54 nuclear reactors in the country are operating(six of them are in the Fukushima First), as many of them are undergoing periodical inspection. The Fukushima disaster was caused because all the supplies of electricity to the reactors were cut off by the quake and the tsunami, with no provision whatsoever for such an emergency. Public opinions are divided on the future of the nuclear power generation. But the majority seems to be in favour of closing down all the reactors as there is no guarantee that the like of the Fukushima disaster can be prevented.
True, we have a high demand for electricity in summer and winter seasons. The level of utilization of renewable energy is still low. We may have to depend more on the fossil energy with its high warming gas emission. But we have overcome the one year without depending so much on the nuclear energy. And the people, and even industries, have got used to a lower level of energy use, and by so doing have tried to find ways and means of curtailing warming gas emission. That is where our future, or at least one aspect of it, lies.
Therefore let us heartily join the voice which is coming up the world over.
Let Hiroshima and Nagasaki be the last use of the nuclear bombs. Let Fukushima be the last nuclear plant.