The international environmental group Greenpeace launched an online campaign Tuesday saying nuclear power plant manufacturers should be held accountable for the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant.

Greenpeace wants Japan’s law on compensation for nuclear damage to be revised so that the companies who designed and built the reactors pay as well.

Currently, compensation is being paid by Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima plant that has been crippled since the massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.

Greenpeace said only India, Russia and South Korea have legislation under which nuclear plant suppliers are held liable in the event of a disaster.

The environmental group is calling for a system that does not allow the nuclear industry to evade responsibility for compensating the public for disasters.

“The Fukushima disaster exposes the shameful defects in a system that only requires nuclear operators to pay a fraction of the costs of a disaster and does not require suppliers of reactors to pay anything,” Aslihan Tumer, Greenpeace International nuclear campaigner, said in a press release dated Tuesday.

“It is not fair that the nuclear industry benefits while the public is left to pay the heavy price for its failures,” Tumer said.

KEYWORDS fukushima, nuclear, crisis