(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) Kyushu Electric Power Co. formally announced on Monday it will restart a reactor at its nuclear power plant in southwestern Japan on Tuesday morning after a four-year hiatus.
With the resumption, Kyushu Electric Power Co's Sendai nuclear plant, about 1,000 km southwest of Tokyo, will become the first nuclear facility to resume operations under new and stricter safety standards adopted following the 2011 Fukushima radiation crisis.
According to the utility, the complex's No. 1 reactor is expected to begin generating on Friday, and start commercial operation next month.
Last September, the Nuclear Regulation Authority 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 plans to resume operations of the No.2 unit in October. All of the country's 48 workable 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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