April 26th marks the 27th anniversary of the devastating accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

The radiation released into the atmosphere by the exploding nuclear reactor found its way across Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and large parts of Europe.

The contamination still lingers in many places – the disaster has a legacy that continues even now.

So today, we remember those who died in the Chernobyl accident and those who must still live with the terrible after effects of the radioactive contamination that still blights their lives.

Chernobyl should have been the world’s last nuclear accident. Enough of us shouted “NO MORE CHERNOBYLS!” But those with the money and the power and that strange ability to put profits before the protection of people carried on regardless.

And sure enough, in March 2011, a quarter of a century after the horror of the Chernobyl disaster, we watched on as Japan suffered earthquake, tsunami, and then nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The warnings of Chernobyl had not been heeded. The warnings that the Fukushima nuclear reactors were vulnerable were not heeded. Once again it was the people, not the nuclear industry that paid the price.

The comparisons between Chernobyl and Fukushima are stark. Thousands upon thousands of people displaced from their homes to face uncertain futures. Melted reactors too dangerous for humans to approach for decades. Homes, schools, soil, food and water contaminated. Uncertainty about the long-term effects of the radiation that has spewed into the environment. Fear and anxiety that will creep across generations.

So today we remember both Chernobyl and Fukushima. There should never have been another Chernobyl. There should never be another Fukushima. Let us shout “NO MORE CHERNOBYLS AND FUKUSHIMAS” until we are heard.

It’s time we all stopped paying the price for nuclear power’s mistakes.

You can help by signing our petition to make the big, rich companies that supply nuclear reactors part of the responsibly for nuclear disasters that now rests with nuclear operators.

Companies like GE, Hitachi and Toshiba that supplied the flawed reactors at Fukushima should pay some of the costs. Right now they don’t have to. Making them more responsible for the costs of a nuclear disaster would at least help reduce some of the mistakes that lead to accidents.

It’s time to make the entire nuclear industry face its moral and financial responsibilities. It’s time to think of people not profits.

(Image: October 2005, Chernobyl. Remains of a fairground in the town of Pripyat, left abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. 10/24/2005 © Greenpeace / Steve Morgan)

Greenpeace activists join tens of thousands of people marching on the Japanese parliament on March 10, 2013 in remembrance of the 2011 triple disaster in Fukushima , and to demand the Japanese government to abandon its dangerous nuclear program.

As we mark the second memorial of the March 11, 2011 triple disaster, we see tragedy, but also hope in Japan.

While people mourn for the mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents and children that were lost in the earthquake and tsunami, many of those that fled the natural disaster have been able to return home and rebuild their lives and communities as best they can.

The tragedy continues, however, for those still suffering from the impacts of radioactive contamination from the Fukushima nuclear accident. Many areas remain uninhabitable, leaving 160,000 evacuees stuck in limbo, unable to go home, but also unable to rebuild their lives as they lack proper compensation and support.

Families and communities are breaking up, financial ruin is common, as is divorce and mental breakdowns. Recent estimates suggest cancer rates are likely to increase in Fukushima, which weighs heavily on people’s minds, and suicides are increasing in the area. It is untrue to say nobody has lost their lives as a result of the nuclear accident.

This ongoing tragedy for the victims of the nuclear disaster is the fault of a system that is supposed to provide fair compensation when there is a nuclear disaster, but doesn’t. This system essentially protects the nuclear industry, not people.

That the nuclear industry is protected before people is a sad and totally unjust reality for most of the world.

The cost of the Fukushima disaster is estimated at US$250 billion, but costs so far have already crushed owner TEPCO so badly it had to be nationalised. TEPCO is one of the largest energy utilities in the world, yet it had to be protected from its responsibilities. Taxpayers are now picking up the tab.

Worse still is that the system offers even greater protection to companies like General Electric, Hitachi and Toshiba. They built the Fukushima plant based on a flawed reactor design. Yet the regulations allow them to walk away and pay nothing to help victims. They also do not show much moral responsibility to help.

The big gap between the costs of a nuclear disaster and what the nuclear industry pays should make everyone angry.
This reality, like other painful truths about nuclear power, has hit home with many Japanese people. They are standing up in protest.

Last year I wrote about hope and the emerging “Hydrangea revolution”. Hundreds of thousands of protestors flooded the streets of Tokyo around the Prime Minister’s residence and the parliament. These protests continue, and the support for a total nuclear phase-out in Japan is growing.

People are angry, first at the previous government’s decision to restart a nuclear power plant after all were switched off following the Fukushima meltdowns, and now they are angry at the new government’s plans to restart more reactors, and to resume building them.
This mobilisation has already had some success, as only two of Japan’s reactors are currently online. The rest remain offline, and it will not be long until the lone two reactors working at the Ohi plant are once again shut down for maintenance, leaving Japan nuclear-free once more. We want an end to our disastrous experiment with nuclear power. We showed that we can live without it last summer, and we will do so again.

The hope coming out of Fukushima is that the people continue to speak out, loudly and clearly, about this man-made disaster, to speak out against nuclear power.

Over the last week they have again been joined by people in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Finland, India, Jordan, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, and the USA calling for nuclear companies to be made responsible for the damage they can, and do, cause.

We cannot stop natural disasters, but we can prevent man-made ones.

We cannot give the people of Fukushima back what they have lost, but we can stand together and ensure they get compensated, that they are remembered, and that no one has to suffer through a nuclear meltdown ever again.

We hope that the Japanese government will listen to the voices of its people, stop talking about nuclear, and push renewables much harder.

You can help – sign here and demand that nuclear companies, like General Electric, Hitachi and Toshiba, are responsible for nuclear disasters.

Two years have passed since the Fukushima nuclear disaster began but little has changed for the people still struggling with the fallout from the triple meltdown that forced 160,000 from their homes.

The vast majority of those that have lost their homes remain stuck in limbo without proper compensation for their losses from the plant operator, TEPCO, or support to move on with their lives. Families are separated, communities are disintegrating and the level of mistrust in the government’s promises is growing.

Hear below from Fukushima victims and their reality two years later.

Greenpeace activists plant cherry trees in front the Duke Energy Harris Nuclear Plant near New Hill, N.C.

Monday will mark the two-year anniversary of the day that the disastrous Japanese earthquake and tsunami were exacerbated by the manmade disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Two years after the meltdowns and explosions at the nuclear plant, tens of thousands of people in Japan still cannot safely return to their homes as a result of the disaster.

After Fukushima, many companies and governments finally accepted what they should have known all along: nuclear power is a bad bet. Aside from being far more expensive than safe, clean forms of energy like wind and solar power, nuclear plants simply present too great a safety risk to allow their continued construction.

But one company, Duke Energy – the largest electric utility in theUS– has yet to learn its lesson, and is still trying to build new nuclear plants despite the obvious risks.

So today, Greenpeace activists implored Duke to remember the lessons ofFukushima. The activists planted cherry trees outside of Duke Energy’s nuclear power plant in North Carolina. Other activists created cherry tree memorials at the sites of planned nuclear reactors Duke intends to build in South Carolina and Florida.

In addition to the awful safety risk demonstrated by the tragedy at Fukushima, costs for the three new reactors that Duke wants to build are soaring over their budgets. Worse yet, laws in all three states allow Duke to stick its customers with the construction bill before the reactors are ever completed.

Duke’s existing fleet of nuclear power plants reveals even more reasons why we shouldn’t trust it to build any more reactors: Duke recently retired the CrystalRivernuclear plant near Tampa, FLdue to a cracked containment dome. The two reactors at Duke’s Brunswick plant near Wilmington, NC have the same General Electric design that melted down in Japan. And Duke’s Oconee nuclear plant in South Carolina is vulnerable to a meltdown if a dam looming over the plant fails. According to calculations from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the risk to Duke’s Oconee reactors from a dam failure is far higher than the odds were of an earthquake-induced tsunami causing a meltdown at theFukushima plant.

The good news is that consumers from throughout Duke’s service territory are revolting against having to pay in advance for over-budget, risky nuclear plants. A bipartisan group of Floridastate senators – including former nuclear supporters – is now decrying the law there and calling for its repeal.

Duke should hear those concerns, learn the lessons of Fukushima, and join the rest of the world in recognizing that nuclear energy is simply too dangerous for us to bet our safety on.

Activists from Greenpeace Turkey protest in front of the Hagia Sofia.

At 2:46pm, 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake and tsunami hit north east Japan, triggering three meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Since then, an unthinkable amount of radioactive contamination has been discharged to our sea, our air, our land, and onto ourselves. It has changed the lives of millions of people, destroyed local farmlands and fisheries that were carefully protected for generations.

The most contaminated areas of Fukushima nuclear disaster remain inhabitable, and will for decades. This leaves the 160,000 ordered to evacuate stuck in limbo, unable to go home, and unable to build new lives elsewhere because they lack proper compensation and support.

Meanwhile, companies deeply involved in the design, construction and running of the reactors involved in the triple meltdown are not being held accountable. Shockingly in some cases, they are making more profits out of the disaster recovery. These companies, namely GE, Hitachi, and Toshiba who designed and built reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, have special rights under the Nuclear Damage Liability Law that protect them from product liability should there be a nuclear disaster. Essentially this means they can profit without worrying about the risks of a meltdown, since the public pays the damage should an accident happen.

The estimated cost of the nuclear disaster is $250 billion US, an impossible figure for any single company – even TEPCO, one of the largest power companies in the world. It is why compensation and life support for the people affected is not what it should be, and why 3.2 trillion yen ($43.7 bn) of Japanese taxpayers money has been injected into the company.

We have been talking with GE, Hitachi and Toshiba, however, when it comes to a question of their responsibility, they simply point to their existing Corporate Social Responsibility webpage or report, where they present their charitable activities in response to the earthquake and tsunami. They have avoided explaining their responsibility in the Fukushima nuclear disaster as a supplier of critical equipment.

Unlike their other products, mentions of their nuclear products are few on the companies’ websites. So Greenpeace Japan asked them to publish their official views about:

• their responsibility in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster
• their responsibility and potential liability in the event of a nuclear accident at a nuclear reactor manufactured by them
• their reasons for their ongoing involvement in and promotion of the nuclear business

When it comes to nuclear power and the vast damage it can cause, some charitable work does not make up for the risk created in the first place.

If being accountable for your products can mean total bankruptcy for your company, there is a problem with your product. Yet nuclear suppliers are not accountable for the risk their products create, or for the moral issues that arise. Instead, if there is a problem, companies hide behind laws that give them unfair protection.

As former Babcock-Hitachi engineer Mitsuhiko Tanaka said in a Greenpeace video about a flawed reactor vessel Hitachi made for Fukushima: “when the stakes are raised to such a height, a company will not choose what is safe and legal. Even if it is dangerous they will choose to save the company from destruction.”

Corporate social responsibility does not ensure timely and just compensation for the people who are suffering, and it does not protect taxpayers from footing the bill for the negligence of the nuclear industry. Laws must change.

If these companies whose products created such severe damage can walk away while the people are forced to pay the cost, the Fukushima disaster will be repeated.

Please help us hold nuclear suppliers responsible: the polluter must pay. Sign our petition today.