The Yomiuri Shimbun The governor of Ehime Prefecture said Monday he has agreed to the restart of the No. 3 reactor at Shikoku Electric Power Co.’s Ikata nuclear power plant, which would end the hiatus at the facility that started in April 2011.
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“This is a decision made with an extremely large responsibility attached”, Nakamura told Hayato Saeki, Shikoku Electric Power Co. president, at the Ehime prefectural government building. “Still, we have no choice but to implement the most advanced safety measures and live with it until we find alternative energy to nuclear power”, Nakamura said at a news conference after the meeting.
The reactor passed a screening in July by the Nuclear Regulation Authority under stricter standards introduced after the Fukushima disaster.
No local government in Ehime Prefecture that lies within the 30-kilometer radius from the Ikata nuclear plant expressed opposition to the restart. But the timing of the restart is expected to be January or later because a few necessary procedures remain, including obtaining the authority’s approval for detailed designs of equipment at the facility.
The restarting of first reactor ended almost two years of nuclear blackout in Japan – the longest in the country since it began to produce atomic energy in 1966 – following the Fukushima accident, the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl (Ukraine) in 1986, caused by an quake and a tsunami. He also traveled to Tokyo on Monday afternoon and conveyed his decision to Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Motoo Hayashi. Two reactors in the southern prefecture of Kagoshima have been switched on since the summer after receiving the go-ahead from local authorities.
Japan’s nuclear fleet was gradually taken offline in the years since the Fukushima disaster, with the last of the country’s 43 operable commercial reactors closed in September 2013.
Resuming operations at the Ikata plant required a consensus among the Ikata town government and the Ehime prefectural government, which had both signed safety agreements with Shikoku Electric Power.
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Ikata Mayor Kazuhiko Yamashita has given his consent to the restart, and the prefectural assembly adopted a resolution saying “there is a need to restart” the reactor, making it likely the governor would approve resumption of the reactor’s operation.
