On March 11th of 2011, an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 on Ritcher scale hit the Japanese East coast, damaging severely the area around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.  In 1961 the town councils of Futaba and Ōkuma had voted to invite Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to build a nuclear power plant on the border of the two towns, which are now empty of their inhabitants. The earthquake knocked out the Fukushima complex’s cooling systems , causing hydrogen explosions and meltdowns at three reactors. The accompanying radiological release was rated at Level 7, the highest on the scale and on par with Chernobyl. This is the major nuclear environmental disaster in recent history. The plant began its construction in 1967 and its operations in 1971, it was designed by General Electric Company and built and managed by the Japanese company TEPCO.  Although it was known that tsunamis of more than 30 meters could occur in the region, the plant had only a 6 meter containment wall and many essential systems were located in flood areas. During the days after the accident, some radioactive elements escaped from Fukushima were identified around the world. The accident caused the release of radioactive material into the sea for a long time. TEPCO hoped to clean the water using a filtering system and started releasing water contaminated at low levels into the ocean. Tens of thousand of people were evacuated and will not be able to come back. Some have been compensated by TEPCO evidencing health damage such cancer and possibly malformations in newborns. The damage in biodiversity is very visible (butterflies, fish, and other animals).  TEPCO is under state management, totally unable to face the very large liabilities from the accidents. Some national and international outcomes of this accidente are positive for the environmental movement that has long been opposed to nuclear energy. All nuclear power stations in Japan were closed, and the attempts by the government after 2015 to start again some of them still encounter widespread opposition.  On March 15, 2011, Angela Merkel, German Chancellor  announced the preventive closure of seven of the 17 active nuclear power plants. In Spain, the organization Ecologistas en Acción called for the closure of the Garoña nuclear plant, other actions were taken in  Austria, Chile, Italy, Suitzerland.