A neighborhood authorities in Japan voted Monday to restart the world’s largest nuclear energy plant, which has been closed since 2011 Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.
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A neighborhood meeting in Japan voted to restart the world’s largest nuclear energy plant. This plant has been idle since a 2011 nuclear catastrophe in Japan at a plant run by the identical firm. NPR’s Anthony Kuhn stories the restart goes forward regardless of native opposition.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant sits on the Sea of Japan in Niigata prefecture. The plant’s seven nuclear reactors assist to energy one of many world’s most populous cities, Tokyo, some 136 miles to the southeast. Niigata’s prefectural meeting handed a vote of confidence within the governor who helps the plant’s restart, basically green-lighting the transfer. Kenichi Oshima is a professor of environmental economics at Ryukoku College in Kyoto. He says the federal government is decided to see the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant restart so as to ship a political message.
KENICHI OSHIMA: (By way of interpreter) I feel they need to present that nuclear energy vegetation and their operators can be all proper, even when they trigger a nuclear accident.
KUHN: Japan’s authorities plans to double the nuclear a part of Japan’s vitality combine to roughly 20% by 2040. The plant is operated by the Tokyo Electrical Energy Firm, or TEPCO, Japan’s largest electrical utility. In 2007, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa was shut down for 21 months after a magnitude 6.6 earthquake prompted small radiation leaks and fires. In 2021, regulators successfully banned it from restarting as a consequence of safety breaches and security inspection data which TEPCO falsified. TEPCO additionally runs the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. After the catastrophe there, Japanese courts cleared TEPCO executives of prison negligence and civil liabilities. A latest ballot confirmed that 61% of native residents felt that circumstances for Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s restart had not been met. However Oshima says that the ability plant is now primarily a nationwide challenge.
OSHIMA: (By way of interpreter) On a nationwide stage, reminiscences of the Fukushima nuclear accident have began to fade. Additionally, nationwide and regional governments and TEPCO have repeatedly stated that the plant is economical and decarbonizing. And there are nonetheless a sure quantity of people that imagine it, whether or not it is true or not.
KUHN: Oshima says it isn’t true. He calculates that even after restarting, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant can be unprofitable, and he argues Japan’s growing reliance on nuclear energy will delay its transition to renewable vitality sources.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR Information, Seoul.
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