(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) Kyushu Electric Power Company on Tuesday began loading nuclear fuel into a reactor at its nuclear power plant in southwestern Japan.
The utility said it plans to insert 157 fuel rod assemblies into the No. 1 reactor at its Sendai nuclear plant over four days.
The move paves the way for Kyushu Electric's plant in Kagoshima Prefecture, about 1,000 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, to become the first nuclear facility to resume operations since the 2011 Fukushima radiation crisis. Kyushu Electric aims to reactivate the No.1 unit in mid-August after NRA's equipment checks.
Last September, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) gave formal approval for the plant's No. 1 and No. 2 reactors to restart, saying the utility has satisfied the new and stricter safety standards for nuclear facilities. Kyushu Electric's two reactors have been offline since May 2011 after the Fukushima crisis. It also hopes to resume operations of the No.2 unit in October. All of the country's workable 48 commercial reactors remain idled for maintenance or safety checks, with the last going offline in September 2013. The new and stricter safety guidelines, introduced in July 2013, were based on lessons from the 2011 March Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster. Under the new rules, nuclear power plant operators are for the first time obliged to take concrete steps to prepare for radiation leaks in case of severe accidents, such as huge tsunami and reactor core meltdowns. The power companies are also required to install an emergency control center to guard against acts of terrorism and natural disasters. Before the March 2011 atomic accident, nuclear plants in Japan, which is heavily dependent on Middle Eastern oil, produced 30 percent of its electricity. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office in December 2012, has been pushing for restart of reactors.
The Fukushima plant, located 230 km north of Tokyo, was crippled in March 2011 by the magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami that caused explosions, meltdowns and massive leaks of radioactive material as the world's worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
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