Global nuclear debate heats up

Flashback: Governments around the globe question the use of nuclear power as Japan’s attempted to avert a meltdown at one of its plants erode confidence in nuclear energy.

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The San Onofre Nuclear Generating plant in north San Diego County, Calif. Californians have long had an uneasy relationship with their two nuclear power plants, and the crisis in Japan, after the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, raises new doubts about how long nuclear power will survive in the earthquake-prone state.

/ REUTERS

The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, near San Luis Obispo, is earthquake-prone California's other nuclear power plant.

PHIL KLEIN / AP

A sign marks the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, where the U.S. suffered its most serious nuclear accident in 1979, in Middletown, Pa. U.S. regulators should press ahead with approving construction licenses for new nuclear power plants despite Japan's nuclear crisis, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Tuesday.

JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS

Technicians at the Three Mile Island plant enter the outer airlock door leading into the containment building housing the disabled reactor in Harrisburg, Pa. on Feb. 11, 1982.

/ AP

This is an aerial photo of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant taken two or three days after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion which spread clouds of radioactive dust across the western part of the Soviet Union and Europe.

/ AP

Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant during a demonstration. Germany will shut down all seven of its nuclear power plants that began operating before 1980 at least till June, the government said, leaving open whether they will ever start up again after Japan's crisis.

RALPH ORLOWSKI / REUTERS

In Neckarwestheim, Germany, residents said living in the shadow of a 35-year-old nuclear plant is making them increasingly nervous in the wake of the events in Japan.

Michael Probst / AP

A car passes between cooling towers of the Temelin nuclear power plant 80 miles south of Prague. The Czech Republic has no immediate plans to review its atomic expansion plans due to the nuclear crisis in Japan following an earthquake and tsunami, the Czech's nuclear safety office chief said on Monday.

PETR JOSEK / REUTERS

A fishing boat is anchored in the water in front of the nuclear power station in Seabrook, N.H. Anxiety over Japan's quake-crippled nuclear reactors has triggered calls from U.S. lawmakers and activists for review of U.S. energy policy and for brakes on expansion of domestic nuclear power.

BRIAN SNYDER / REUTERS

The Calvert Cliff Nuclear Power plant in southern Maryland.

Jonathan Newton / WASHINGTON POST

The Calvert Cliff Nuclear Power plant near Lusby, Md.

Jonathan Newton / WASHINGTON POST

A nuclear cooling tower is seen next to a historical windmill in Doel, Belgium. In response to events taking place in Japan, the Belgian government has opened a website with information on evacuation in the event of a nuclear accident and also said that they will make iodine tablets available to all residents in the evacuation zone. Belgium currently has two operating nuclear power plants.

Virginia Mayo / AP

The Hanford nuclear reservation's B Reactor in the mid-1940s near Richland, Wash. Hanford was created as part of the Manhattan Project to make plutonium for nuclear weapons. From 1944 to 1951, large amounts of radioactive Iodine 131 went up smokestacks and scattered across parts of Washington and Idaho, accordin to government estimates.

/ AP

Tourists take pictures in front of Brazil's Angra dos Reis nuclear complex, 150 miles from Rio de Janeiro. Governments around the globe questioned the use of nuclear power as Japan's attempts to avert a meltdown at one of its plants eroded confidence in nuclear energy and put more focus on the renewables industry.

RICARDO MORAES / REUTERS

A car drives past the nuclear power plant in the Swiss town of Leibstadt 31 miles north-west of Zurich. Switzerland has suspended the approvals process for three new nuclear power stations so safety standards can be revisited after the explosion at a Japanese plant, Energy Minister Doris Leuthard said on Monday.

ARND WIEGMANN / REUTERS

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