On August 7th, Teens4Disarmament participated in the 15th anniversary of Hiroshima Jogakuin’s Peace Forum. This year, attendees came from a wide variety of high schools, including Westridge School, Kansai Soka High School, and Nagasaki Higashi High School.

The co-founder of the Global Hibakusha Project, historian Dr. Robert (Bo) Jacobs, gave an informative speech at the opening of the 15th Peace Forum of Hiroshima Jogakuin. Dr. Jacobs told us about the environmental risks associated with nuclear manufacturing and storage. All nuclear power plants, even the ones that do not produce nuclear weapons, continuously create hazardous plutonium, posing as a threat to the surrounding community and the environment. The leftover plutonium from these power plants has been dangerous for more than 240,000 years. Uranium mining also leaves millions of tons that remain a risk for 1 million years. Dr. Jacobs suggests that our world should make an effort to 1) stop making more waste, 2) work towards renewable energy sources, and 3) insist our government spends the necessary effort and money to clear up radioactive waste sites.

We then divided into smaller groups to discuss potential action plans for educating more people about the hazardous impacts of nuclear energy on our environment and what each of us can do to stop producing waste. Afterward, we all consolidated our action plan statements into one single paper. We concluded by signing our declaration for peace and action to formally enact our document.