After the loss of 10 million American lives in the Three-Mile Island calamity in 1979, the death of 2 billion in the Chernobyl holocaust in 1986, and now the abandonment of all of northern Japan following the death of millions in last year's Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, it is hardly surprising that the world's biggest users of nuclear power are shutting their plants down.
Oh, wait a minute. ... This just in! Nobody died in the Three-Mile Island calamity; 28 plant workers were killed and 15 other people subsequently died of thyroid cancer in the Chernobyl holocaust; and nobody died in the Fukushima catastrophe. In fact, northern Japan has not been evacuated after all. But never mind all that. They really are shutting their nuclear plants down.
They have already shut them down in Japan. All of the country's 50 nuclear reactors were closed for safety checks after the tsunami damaged the Fukushima plant, and only two have reopened so far. The government, which was previously planning to increase nuclear's share of the national energy mix to half by 2030, has now promised to close every nuclear power plant in Japan permanently by 2040.