atomic power

After 70 years of atomic power, there is still disagreement over what to do with the accumulated radioactive waste - some of which will remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years.

Further north, at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata prefecture, the world’s largest atomic power plant by power capacity, the quake caused water to spill from fuel pools of two reactors.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government has reversed Japan’s nuclear energy phaseout plan, instead looking to use atomic power as key energy supply accounting to more than one-fifth of the country’s energy supply.

The energy grid expansion comes as Russia still occupies Europe’s largest atomic power plant in Ukraine, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and fighting still endangers others.

Fears of a nuclear disaster have increased, particularly this week after Ukraine and Russia accused each other of planning to attack one of the world’s largest atomic power plants.