The Mayor of Nagasaki on Tuesday urged for increased use of renewable energies in Japan to replace nuclear power at a ceremony marking the 66th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the Japanese city.

"No matter how long it will take, it is necessary to promote the development of renewable energies in place of nuclear power in a bid to transform ourselves into a society with a safer energy base," Tomihisa Taue said in this year's Nagasaki Peace Declaration.

Taue told Xinhua in an interview on Monday that Japan once believed the myth of the safety of nuclear power plants, but it has started thinking about other options. The current situation of depending on nuclear power should been changed, he said.

Teruo Nakamura, chairperson of the Nagasaki City Council, invoked the radiation leaks at the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant. "We are being affected by very serious contamination throughout the country similar to that of the radiation from the atomic bomb," he said.

The nuclear crisis at the crippled plant is the world's worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl explosion. It was triggered by the devastating March 11 earthquake and ensuing tsunami. The facility is still leaking radioactive substances into environment.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan used Tuesday's event to renew his pledge that Japan would examine the causes of the nuclear accident at the crippled plant and aim for a society that would not depend on nuclear power generation.

Kan made similar comments at the memorial ceremony in Hiroshima last Saturday. On that occasion, Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui urged the Japanese government to review its energy policy following the nuclear crisis at the crippled plant in an annual peace declaration.

A basic energy policy worked out in 2010 aimed to increase the ratio of nuclear power generation to 53 percent of the country's consumption by 2030 from about 30 percent at the time. The country currently has 54 commercial nuclear reactors.

But, the nuclear accident at the Fukushima plant had led the nation to rethink the policy. An updated energy strategy drafted in late July seeks to cut its dependence on nuclear-generated energy, without saying how deep the reduction would go.

Representatives from record 44 countries and regions, including James Zumwalt, deputy chief of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, attended Tuesday's event. Zumwalt became the first U.S. government envoy to be present at the ceremony.

At the end of World War II, a nuclear bomb was detonated over Hiroshima at an altitude of some 600 meters on Aug. 6, 1945, killing an estimated 140,000 people. A second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945 and Japan surrendered six days later.

VietNamNet/Xinhuanet