The restart comes more than four years after a quake-sparked tsunami triggered meltdowns at the Fukushima plant.
The tragedy prompted the shutdown of Japan's stable of reactors in the world's worst atomic crisis in a generation.
Resource-poor Japan, which once relied on nuclear power for a quarter of its electricity, restarted two reactors temporarily to feed its needs.
But they both went offline by September 2013, making it completely nuclear-free for about two years.
Japan has ushered in tougher safety rules to avoid a repeat of Fukushima, including more backup prevention measures and higher tsunami-blocking walls in areas most susceptible to them.
The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is keen to get some of about four dozen reactors back up and running.
So are the power companies that own them, fed up with having to make up lost generating capacity with pricey fossil fuels.
"It is important for the country's energy policy that the government go ahead with reactor restarts once they are confirmed as safe," top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters Monday.
"The biggest priority is safety."
The reactor No. 1 at the Sendai nuclear plant, nearly 1,000 kilometres southwest of Tokyo, has been loaded with atomic fuel.
The 31-year-old reactor will start generating power by Friday, but regular operations would not begin until early September, a Kyushu Electric Power spokeswoman said.
Several other reactors have received a safety green light from officials, who stressed that any switched-on reactor would operate under much tighter regulations than those that existed before Fukushima, the worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.
"A disaster like that at Tokyo Electric Power's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant will not occur," under the new rules, Nuclear Regulation Authority chairman Shunichi Tanaka said in an interview with the Nikkei newspaper published at the weekend.
"The new regulations are incomparably (stricter) than those under the old system."
Tanaka conceded there was "no such thing as absolute safety", but said any future crisis would "be contained before it reached a scale anywhere near what happened in Fukushima".
But Japan's people are sceptical and the country remains deeply scarred by Fukushima, which forced tens of thousands of people from their homes -- many of whom will likely never return.
rte.ie
11/8/15
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Plus de quatre ans après Fukushima, le Japon renoue avec l'énergie nucléaire...
ReplyDeletePlus de quatre ans après la catastrophe de Fukushima, et deux ans après l'arrêt de toutes les centrales nucléaire du Japon, un premier réacteur a été redémarré dans la nuit, au nom de l'indépendance énergétique.
Conformément à la volonté du gouvernement, un réacteur nucléaire a été relancé mardi matin au Japon, plus de quatre ans après la catastrophe de Fukushima qui avait entraîné l'arrêt de toutes les centrales du pays depuis septembre 2013. Un redémarrage au nom de l'indépendance énergétique, et malgré l'opposition de la majorité des Japonais.
"Le réacteur numéro 1 de la centrale de Sendai [sur l'île méridionale de Kyushu] a redémarré à 10h30", a annoncé à l'AFP un porte-parole de la compagnie Kyushu Electric Power. Le cœur du réacteur devrait entrer en réaction en chaîne auto-entretenue à compter de 23heures. Il commencera à générer dès vendredi de l'électricité qui sera exploitée commercialement à partir de début septembre, selon la compagnie.
Il s'agit du premier réacteur remis en service en conformité avec la nouvelle réglementation entrée en vigueur en juillet 2013, afin de rendre les centrales nucléaires plus aptes à faire face à une catastrophe naturelle, à un attentat terroriste ou à un crash d'avion..............http://www.france24.com/fr/20150811-japon-fukushima-energie-nucleaire-reacteur-sendai-abe
11/8/15