If the control rods pass the safety check, Kyushu Electric Power Co. plans to reactivate the reactor on August 11, and start generating power by August 14.
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The restart marks Japan’s return to nuclear power, breaking a four-and-half-year nuclear energy deadlock because the 2011 meltdowns on the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear energy plant in northeastern Japan following the quake and tsunami. The disaster displaced more than 100,000 people due to radioactive contamination in the area.
Japanese anti-nuclear protestors demonstrated against the restart in Kyushu on Monday.
“We believe it is important for our energy policy to push forward restarts of reactors that are deemed safe”, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.
However, environmental activists with the support of a large number of the general public protested against the decision and approached courts to block restart of reactors.
All of Japan’s almost 50 operable commercial reactors remain closed after the Fukushima accident, and are now awaiting safety checks by the NRA before they can be put online again.
“A disaster like that at Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant will not occur”, under the new rules, Nuclear Regulation Authority chairman Shunichi Tanaka said in an interview with the Nikkei newspaper published at the weekend.
An estimated 25 out of 43 reactors are hoping to get the green light and obtain restart permits.
The crisis transfixed the world as the government and the Fukushima operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), fumbled their response and took two months to confirm that the reactors had undergone meltdowns.
Underneath the essential power plan adopted by the Cupboard final yr to maintain nuclear energy as a key power provide for resource-poor Japan, the federal government earlier this yr set a aim to have nuclear energy meet greater than 20 per cent of the nation’s power wants by 2030. Residents near the Sendai plant are also wary of the restarts, citing potential dangers from active volcanos in the region.
The announcement came on Monday despite the public’s disdain for nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
“The current evacuation plan is nonsense”, said Shouhei Nomura, a 79-year-old former worker at a nuclear equipment plant.
With its nuclear fuel recycling program still stalled and plutonium stockpiles triggering global concerns, Japan is under pressure to use as much of the stockpiles as possible in its reactors.
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“Utilities that have poured in billions of dollars into constructing a nuclear plant are going to fight very hard to operate them”, M.V. Ramana, a professor at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, said by e-mail. The question is whether Japan can restart as many as 18 reactors needed to burn enough plutonium, and whether the problem-plagued Rokkasho reprocessing plant in northern Japan starts up.
