A reactor at a nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan on Wednesday became the first among those damaged by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami to obtain final restart approval, with support from regional authorities.
Reactor number 2 at the Onagawa power plant, located 340 kilometers north of Tokyo, had already been cleared for restart by nuclear safety authorities after complying with new safety standards imposed after the Fukushima disaster on March 11, 2011. But today it becomes the first reactor affected by the disaster to obtain the decisive green light from the local authorities for its restart, after the approval of the governor of Miyagi prefecture, Yoshihiro Murai.
A real restart in 2023
All of Japan's nuclear power plants were closed after the Fukushima nuclear accident and most of them are still shut down today.
However, the government has been lobbying for years to put several of them back into service, especially since at the end of October it set a carbon neutrality target for the country by 2050, which seems difficult to achieve without increasing significantly. the share of nuclear.
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"Due to the closure of nuclear power stations, Japan is increasingly dependent on thermal energy using fossil fuels," Yoshihiro Murai told reporters.
“There is concern about increasing CO2 emissions” and “we cannot expect to suddenly expand the use of safe and clean renewables” to meet demand, he added.
The very resistant population
However, it will take some time before the Onagawa plant is brought back into service.
According to the business daily Nikkei, the operator of the plant, the company Tohoku Electric Power, is targeting a restart in March 2023, after taking additional security measures.
Traumatized by the Fukushima accident, Japanese public opinion remains very hostile to the revival of nuclear power in the country.
According to the public broadcaster NHK, 16 reactors from nine nuclear power plants in the country currently meet the new safety standards established after the 2011 disaster. Of these 16 reactors, two were damaged in 2011, including number 2 of the nuclear power plant. 'Onagawa.
On the other hand, the reactors of the two nuclear power plants of Fukushima Daiichi and Daini, the most affected by the earthquake and the tsunami, must be dismantled after pharaonic work over several decades.