Nuclear energy, ten years after Fukushima

How we got hereIn the 1950s and 1960s, the spread of nuclear energy seemed unstoppable. Four months after the reactor failure, the German parliament voted to phase out nuclear energy altogether by 2022. In the United States, a review of the operation of nuclear power plants was conducted after Fukushima by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But much of the support for nuclear energy focuses almost exclusively on its techno-economic characteristics, downplaying unresolved moral and ethical concerns. For example, the capture of the then Japanese Nuclear Industry Safety Authority by the nuclear industry is widely regarded as an institutional cause of the Fukushima accident12.