What nuclear industry after Fukushima?

Nuclear power experienced a fast growth during the 70's and 80's, but a quasi-stagnation during the 90's. Since the beginning of the 21. century, a so-called renaissance could be witnessed, fuelled by concerns about energy security of supply, volatility of oil and gas prices, fear of an incoming 'peak oil', and, last but not least, the threat of global climate change due to the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse effect gases. Then, on March 11 2011, a monster earthquake followed by a violent tsunami triggered an accident which all but destroyed four nuclear reactors on the Fukushima-Daiichi site, on the east coast of Honshu, the main Japanese island. There was meltdown in three reactor cores, hydrogen explosions which blew off the upper structures of four reactor buildings, and massive radioactive contamination of a spread of land north-west of the site as well as radioactive releases to the ocean. This accident triggered reactions of various intensities throughout the world, awakening the fears, and questions raised 25 years before by the Chernobyl accident. But the tsunami did not make the fundamentals of the renaissance disappear. After a pause, to fully learn lessons from the accident, the renaissance is likely to start again, all the much since the 'third generation' nuclear plants would have survived unscathed the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami. (author)