Japan has restarted the world's largest nuclear power plant. The operator behind the plant, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, said this, according to the AFP news agency.
The plant has been out of operation since the Fukushima accident in 2011. The restart took place on Monday after an earlier attempt was quickly suspended due to a minor error, AFP reports.
It was a challenge with a monitoring alarm in January that forced the operator Tepco to suspend the start-up. So far, however, only one out of a total of seven of the plant's reactors has been restarted, according to AFP. The nuclear power plant is located in Niigata province.
In 2011, an earthquake and then a tsunami hit Japan. Another nuclear power plant, located in Fukushima and operated by Tepco, was severely affected. The earthquake and tsunami triggered a partial meltdown in several of the plant's reactors and resulted in radioactive releases into the areas around Fukushima - including the sea.
Subsequently, all 54 active nuclear reactors in Japan were taken out of service. Since then, 14 of them have been put back into service after new and stricter safety regulations were introduced in the Japanese nuclear power sector. None of them are operated by Tepco.
AI requires energy
The shutdown of all nuclear power in 2011 meant that Japan became dependent on imports of fossil fuels such as oil and gas from abroad. But now Japan is turning to nuclear power again to reduce its dependence and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, writes AFP.
The country also wants to meet growing energy needs from the use of artificial intelligence.
The conservative Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, who secured a landslide election victory on Sunday, supports nuclear power. More national nuclear power will strengthen Japan's energy security and be cheaper than importing energy, the argument goes.
The Fukushima accident in 2011 is considered, along with the Chernobyl accident in 1986, to be one of the worst nuclear accidents ever. Tepco is also responsible for the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which was hit in 2011. According to AFP, the nuclear power plant is being decommissioned.
Due to the accident, the huge, now reopened, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa power plant has been equipped with, among other things, a 15-meter-high tsunami wall and other safety measures.
/ritzau/
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