TOKYO, Oct. 15 (UPI) — Japan has restarted its second nuclear reactor at its Sendai complex in Kyushu, despite popular opposition to nuclear energy use in the country.
“We restart the reactors, respecting the decisions approved by the Nuclear Regulation Authority as meeting the world’s most stringent and newest regulations,” Tokyo’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Thursday, CNN reported.
Japan’s commercial reactors were shut down in May 2012, more than a year after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck Fukushima on March 11, 2011, causing the world’s biggest nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.
But power shortage concerns and Japan’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions have played a role in the government’s decision to rely again on low-cost nuclear power.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had said Japan now has the “world’s toughest” nuclear power safety measures and hopes to produce 20-22 percent of Japan’s total electricity from nuclear power, which is still below the 30 percent share it held prior to the Fukushima disaster.
Anti-nuclear protesters, however, are not happy about the decision. Japan press reported 100 activists had assembled outside the Sendai complex on Thursday.
“The public wants to do away with nuclear power. Our voice of protest has been ignored, but we will continue to call for” abandoning nuclear power stations, Hisashi Ide told The Japan Times. Ide joined the rally from Ehime Prefecture, which is hosting one of the three nuclear reactors.
“If an accident occurs, I’m worried it could endanger [the health of] children,” said one unidentified man in his 40s.
Kyushu Electric, the utility responsible for the reactor, had finished placing a total of 157 fuel rod assemblies into the No. 2 reactor in September. Final inspections have been ongoing since Friday.
According to the utility, the reactor is to achieve stable atomic fission late Thursday.
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