Petition signed by 40,000 relays issues 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 vitality supply a decade and a half after the Fukushima catastrophe prompted a nationwide shutdown of reactors.
Tokyo Electrical Energy Co (TEPCO) stated 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). Nevertheless, security issues persist.
Advisable Tales
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The nation’s belief in its nuclear vitality 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 might be restarted on Wednesday. When totally 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 vitality 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 might be doable to revive, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is pushing for the development of latest 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 energetic seismic fault zone and that it was struck by a robust earthquake in 2007.
“We are able to’t take away the concern of being hit by one other unexpected earthquake,” the textual content of the petition stated. “Making many individuals anxious and fearful in order to ship electrical energy to Tokyo … is insupportable.”
TEPCO President Tomoaki Kobayakawa advised the Asahi every day that security was “an ongoing course of, which suggests operators concerned in nuclear energy must not ever be conceited or overconfident”.
The revival of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant comes as Japan’s nuclear business faces a string of latest scandals and incidents, together with knowledge falsification by Chubu Electrical Energy to underestimate seismic dangers.
