Petition signed by 40,000 relays considerations over threat of seismic exercise in neighborhood of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant.
Revealed On 21 Jan 2026
Japan is about to restart the world’s largest nuclear energy plant because it turns again to the power supply a decade and a half after the Fukushima catastrophe prompted a nationwide shutdown of reactors.
Tokyo Electrical Energy Co (TEPCO) mentioned on Wednesday that it was “continuing with preparations” and aimed to restart operations on the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata province at 7pm (10:00 GMT). Nonetheless, security considerations persist.
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The nation’s belief in its nuclear power infrastructure was destroyed by the 2011 triple meltdown at Fukushima, which was run by TEPCO, following a colossal earthquake and tsunami.
Only one reactor of the seven at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa will likely be restarted on Wednesday. When absolutely operational, the plant will generate 8.2 gigawatts of electrical energy, sufficient to energy tens of millions of households.
The plant is unfold over 4.2sq km (1.6sq miles) of land in Niigata, on the coast of the Japan Sea.
Japan, which has suffered setbacks in its offshore wind rollout, is switching its focus again to nuclear energy to strengthen power safety and cut back reliance on imported fossil fuels.
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is the fifteenth plant to be restarted out of 33 that stay operable. Japan shut down all its 54 reactors within the wake of the 2011 catastrophe.
In addition to restarting these vegetation which can be doable to revive, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is pushing for the development of recent reactors.
The federal government lately introduced a brand new state funding scheme to speed up its nuclear energy comeback.
‘Anxious and fearful’
The restart of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, which has been fitted with a 15-metre-high (50-foot) tsunami wall and different security upgrades, was delayed by a day as TEPCO investigated an alarm malfunction that it says has since been addressed.
Earlier this month, teams opposing the restart submitted a petition to TEPCO and Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, signed by practically 40,000 individuals.
The doc famous that the plant sits on an lively seismic fault zone and that it was struck by a powerful earthquake in 2007.
“We will’t take away the worry of being hit by one other unexpected earthquake,” the textual content of the petition mentioned. “Making many individuals anxious and fearful in order to ship electrical energy to Tokyo … is insupportable.”
TEPCO President Tomoaki Kobayakawa advised the Asahi day by day that security was “an ongoing course of, which implies operators concerned in nuclear energy must not ever be boastful or overconfident”.
The revival of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant comes as Japan’s nuclear business faces a string of current scandals and incidents, together with knowledge falsification by Chubu Electrical Energy to underestimate seismic dangers.
