Personally, I believe that this was a critical error in japan's decision making, if I were them, I would not want to take the risk of a nuclear meltdown; especially after what happened when the atomic bomb struck Japan many years ago. However, to be fair, the termination of the plant would mean a power cut, loss of investment and not to mention a halt of production. This may have been why the government tried to sustain the nuclear plants for a longer time.
My second point is that nuclear energy, despite being clean and efficient, will eventually lead to the downfall of man. Just think, if a war was to occur, the first projectiles to be launched would not be the nuclear missiles, but would instead be ordinary missiles targeted at nuclear powerplants. Ironically, the countries at war are leaving ticking timebombs of massive destruction in their own countries! I feel that these nuclear plants should not be constructed in the first place to prevent unnecessary loss of human life. To me, the stakes are just too high.
Firstly nuclear power is not "clean and efficient". Nuclear plants have high levels of radiations, and it contrasted to what you said about them being ticking timebombs. A nuclear plant works by heating up water so steam will turn the turbines. Personally i feel this is a great waste of water. In that aspect, nuclear plants are the same as fossil fuel plants, they both waste a lot of water and are not so efficient. Fossil fuels take hundreds of years to grow back, but the half-life of uranium is also hundreds of years. So using fossil fuels drain the earth's resources, however using nuclear plants create the threat of radiation which takes many lifetimes to be completely removed. And in cases of war, i do not really think countries will target nuclear plants, due to the geneva convention. Clean and efficient resources would be wind power, solar power(still uses a lot of rare metals) or geothermal power.
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