The 7-magnitude earthquake that just jolted northeastern Japan on July 10, 2011 forced another temporary evacuation of workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident site. This latest earth shift underscored the urgency that is moving Japanese away from getting 30% of their electricity from increasingly dangerous nuclear power to safe energy like solar power and efficiency. Japanese officials announced that decommissioning the Fukushima catastrophe is likely to take decades. The harsh reality is that 24 miles of coastline now too radioactive for human habitation is likely never to recover from the extensive earthquake and tsunami damage.
The loss of support for nuclear power now sweeping Japan is so dramatic that all 54 reactors in the country could be shut down or governed at test levels by April 2012. Only 17 units are currently operating and Japanese regulatory policy requires routine outages every 13 months for safety inspections. As they shut down for the scheduled inspection whether or not they will ever restart is now in question.