“We will aim to bring about a society that can exist without nuclear power,” said Japan’s Prime Minister Nato Kan on Wednesday in a televised address to Japan’s citizens.

He continued, “Through my experience of the March 11 accident, I came to realize the risk of nuclear energy is too high. It involves techology that cannot be controlled according to our conventional concept of safety.”

35 of Japan’s 54 reactors are offline at the moment. They include reactors damaged or stopped by the earthquake and tsunami, as well as those closed for routine repairs. If reactors that continue to come offline for maintenance are not restarted, Japan has the potential to be off nuclear power by April 2012.

From the Washington Post