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Anastasia Balezdrova

"Since they have placed wind turbines here, the neighbour’s goats have become gay." It is funny, isn’t it? This is just one of the tragicomic responses of the members of local communities, which are against the installation of systems for energy production from alternative energy sources.

"Whether we like it aesthetically or not is the least of the problems. Within slightly more than a century, humankind has managed to consume a significant part of natural resources. The technology that enables us to replace them with cleaner sources is available. We need only political will to trigger it," said Yiannis Tsipouridis, managing director of the company "DEI Ananeosimes "part of the Public Power Corporation.

He stressed that energy needs globally are constantly growing and the highest consumers are developing economies such as China, India and Brazil. "It is a myth that the installation of environmentally friendly and photovoltaic parks requires greater funding than the funding necessary for plants using coal. The widespread belief that nuclear power plants are built almost overnight with very low overall cost is wrong too. In many countries, governments announce a specific price, but while the plant is being built, and it usually takes years, the price can jump several times."

The dangers of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons were the subject of the open discussion held at the initiative of the Committee against Nuclear Dangers at the Marangopoulos Foundation for Human Rights.

In her introductory speech, the president Alice Yotopoulos - Marangopoulos, honoured professor at the Panteion University, said that humankind should abandon nuclear energy and focus on cleaner sources. "The use of nuclear weapons is even more unacceptable. Hundreds of "dirty" bombs with destructive consequences for people’s health were used in Kosovo recently." She welcomed the decision of the German government to turn off seven nuclear reactors immediately after the nuclear accident in Fukushima last year and described as positive the fact that Barack Obama is ready to take action in this direction, although the Congress will not allow him to do so.

"It is difficult to answer the question as to whether it the accident at the nuclear plant in Fukushima could have been avoided," said the First Secretary of the Embassy of Japan in Athens Takaaki Nemoto. He presented the findings contained in the interim report of the committee seeking the causes of the nuclear disaster. "According to the expert, there were four main factors. The first one is that rescue teams were slow to get to the plant, because the earthquake had destroyed the road surface." Takaaki Nemoto made it clear that in a nuclear accident, the Japanese law provides for the immediate convening of an operational staff with the participation of the Prime Minister. "The report shows that the then Prime Minister spent most of his time in his office with his associates, which delayed the work of the special team." According to the committee, the melting of nuclear fuel in the first and the third reactor of the plant could have been avoided if the managing company had properly interpreted the incoming information and acted appropriately in due course. Workers at the plant were not quite trained enough to operate the cooling system and did not know how to manage it. "TEPCO had not figured out that a situation might occur in which all power sources of all blocks would be disabled as a result of a natural disaster and had not carried out an adequate theoretical and practical training of the employees of the plant," reads the report.

"If this happened in the country with the most disciplined workers in the world, just imagine what could happen in countries like ours, where we are not even able to move because of processions and strikes, as was the case today," added Alice Marangopoulos.