Nuclear Free World

Background

In the wake of the Chernobyl and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disasters, governments around the world remain committed to involvement in the nuclear industry.  The Japanese government is still looking for a way to maintain and even to export nuclear power plants.  The Australian government has recently voted to construct Australia’s first nuclear waste facility and a number of state governments are committed to expanding uranium mining in their states.  The French government remains committed to nuclear power plants. Many other countries are planning to introduce nuclear power plants, and nuclear power is increasingly being proposed to tackle climate change.

Resolution

Nuclear development is against important Green principles:

• It is a non-renewable resource based on the extraction of a dangerous material
• It threatens the lives and health of human beings and of all living beings and it does so over a period of thousands of centuries
• It produces new isotopes, non-existent prior to the production of nuclear energy.
• It reinforces the centralized production of power
• It supports the continued development of weapons of war, through the production of plutonium, used in nuclear warheads
• It can never be a solution to climate change.
• It is not democratic, as it impacts on countries and communities that have not agreed to be involved in the production and use of nuclear power, through locating nuclear power plants outside the countries and communities that use the power, as well as through radioactive waste, radioactive emissions and the transport of nuclear materials

Out of 54 nuclear power plants in Japan, only one is currently operating and this is due to be decommissioned in a month. This presents an opportunity for Japan to move beyond reliance on this dangerous energy source.

In this context, Greens parties will work to:

• End the mining and export of uranium;
• Achieve a global shift to safe, renewable and decentralized energy production, end the production of energy from nuclear power and decommission nuclear power plants;
• Agree on a target year by which to achieve the goals mentioned above;
• Commence the global discussion about the democratic, just and safest possible resolution of where to store nuclear waste, respecting indigenous people’s rights;
• Share strategies and information about how climate change can be tackled through the use of renewable energy and reducing energy consumption and does not require nuclear power;
• Work to get companies to take responsibility;
• Encourage global anti-nuclear movements to launch anti-nuclear activities around the globe with the initiation and participation of the Global Greens and its member parties with a focus on Japan, which has been severely damaged by the Fukushima incident, and in the largest uranium exporting nations, namely Australia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada and Niger.