hile tens of thousands of people remain evacuated in Fukushima even 7 years after the nuclear accident, and, a much larger number of people continue to face its unsparing consequences – physical, financial, social, and psychological, the accident has affected people far beyond territorial and occupational boundaries.

As the ongoing accident at Japan’s crippled reactor site completes 7 years, we interviewed 7 people from across the world – a lawyer-activist in Fukushima fighting cases of evacuees, a renowned Japanese nuclear expert, an activist resolute to keep Germany nuke-free, a Green politician from France, a radio-show producer from the US, a community leader from an Indian village and a Dutch-citizen living in Tokyo who turned into a reluctant activist after the accident.

We asked them what Fukushima meant to them – personally and in their capacity as socio-political actors, how it continues to affect them, and what they think about the path ahead as we collectively struggle to ensure that the lessons from the catastrophe are learnt effectively.

Click on individual photos below to read interviews:

Ruiko Muto

Libbe HaLevy

Laurence Hugues

Kerstin Rudek

Jacinta Hin

Fakir Mahammad Solkar

Hideyuki Ban

Jacinta Hin was born in The Netherlands and has lived in Japan since 1989. She was in Tokyo on March 11, 2011. She works in human resources and coaching, and is passionate about supporting people through change and transition. She is the co-founder of Beautiful Energy, a movement born in the wake of the events of 3/11/11, standing for a nuke-free world thriving on renewable energy through the weekly lighting of candles.

Ruiko Muto is a well-known community activist in Fukushima, associated with ‘Fukushima Women Against Nukes’ and several other citizens’ platforms. She has played a pivotal role in the arduous legal battle to ensure compensation and justice for the Fukushima residents.

Libbe HaLevy is a US-based citizen journalist, who started her weekly web-podcast Nuclear HotSeat after the Fukushima accident which has now become an institution in itself. Having interviewed hundreds of experts and activists on her now famous internet radio show, Libbe talks abot her journey as a producer, anchor and a vigilant citizen.

Hideyuki Ban is a renowned Japanese nuclear expert. He joined the Tokyo-based Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center (CNIC) in 1990 and has been one of the three Co-Directors of CNIC since 1998. He became interested in nuclear power issues after the Three Mile Island Accident in 1979 when he was working in a Cooperative. He has studied many different issues related to nuclear power and, since 2013, is a member of the Nuclear Energy Subcommittee, under the Advisory Committee for Natural Resources and Energy, Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry (METI).

Fakir Mahammad Solkar is a resident of Sakhri Nate – a pre-dominantly fishing village in the picturesque and ecologically-rich Jaitapur region on India’s western coast, where the world’s largest Nuclear Power Project is slated to be set up. Solkar has been at the forefront of the grassroots movement against the proposed plant, and in this interview to DiaNuke, shares memories of the Fukushima accident, and experiences regarding the movement, among other things.

Kerstin Rudek is an activist, campaigner, presenter, speaker, writer and networker. Born and living at the Free Republic of Wendland, Northern Germany, Kerstin is a doting mother and gritty anti-nuclear, human rights and environmental activist. She has played a pivotal role in the international ‘Don’t Nuke The Climate‘ campaign in recent years, exposing the nuclear lobbies’ claims of being a ‘solution’ to climate change.

She has been associated for decades with the Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberg, the oldest citizens’ initiative in Germany that opposes the transport and storage of radioactive waste in Wendland and nuclear transports to the waste storage in Gorleben.

Laurence Hugues is a writer and an ecologist activist associated with the Greens in France. She is presently Deputy Mayor of a Parisian district and has worked many years for Green Members of the National Assembly of France. She has been specifically working on an enterprise liability law and building relationships between India and France which are not based on nuclear and arms trade.