Japan restarts the world’s largest nuclear plant for the first time since the Fukushima disaster

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), operator of the largest nuclear plant in the world, announced that the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant resumed operation yesterday for the first time since the Fukushima disaster in 2011, despite continuing concerns about safety among residents.

The company said, in a statement, that the restart process is initially limited to one of the seven reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, which is the largest in the world in terms of total production capacity. Last month, the governor of Niigata Prefecture (central-western Japan), in which the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa station is located, gave his approval for its restarting its operation, despite the continued severe division of public opinion in this regard, as an opinion poll conducted by the local authorities in the previous September showed that 60% of the population opposed the restarting of the station, while 37% supported it. Despite the extreme cold, the day before yesterday, dozens of people, most of them elderly, demonstrated near the entrance to Kashiwazaki Station on the coast of the Sea of ​​Japan, in protest against the decision. The plant was shut down when Japan closed all of its nuclear reactors, after the triple tragedy that befell Fukushima in March 2011, which witnessed an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster. However, Japan seeks to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, achieve carbon neutrality by the year 2050, and meet the increasing demand for electricity due to artificial intelligence. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also expressed her support for the use of nuclear energy for civilian purposes.