SAFCEI

Disaster at Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan. Pic: Wikipedia.

Dear friends and colleagues in faith,

Warm greetings in this new year of 2012.

This letter is a request that we in the faith communities respond to the calls of civil society, follow the example of faith leaders in Japan following the continuing disaster at Fukushima, and speak out clearly against our Department of Energy’s plan for expanding nuclear energy in South Africa.

When you have finished reading, please email us at coordinator@safcei.org.za to let us know of your support, if we have it.

You will have followed events in Japan last year with the same sense of shock that affected us at SAFCEI: the dreadful tsunami that took so many lives, and the subsequent breakdown, explosions and ongoing crises at the Fukushima nuclear reactor that forced the evacuation of 200,000 people, spread radiation around the northern hemisphere, and will take decades if not centuries to clean up.

The exact circumstances of the nuclear accident at Fukushima are unlikely to be replicated in South Africa. However, as long as we humans imagine that we are immune to natural disasters and human error and believe unpredictable failures of very dangerous technology will not happen to us, these disasters can and will happen again.

Is this what we want for South Africa? Our own leaders seem to have ignored what happened at Fukushima, brushing this great human tragedy aside. Our government is now intent on building no less than six nuclear reactors in South Africa.

The technocrats who advocate nuclear technology seem convinced of their own infallibility. They Read more