Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) on Wednesday gave formal approval for two reactors at a nuclear plant the country's south to restart.
The decision paves the way for Kyushu Electric Power Co's Sendai nuclear plant, about 1,000 km southwest of Tokyo, to become the first nuclear facility to resume operations since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis.
The NRA unanimously approved the safety report required to restart Kyushu Electric's No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at its Sendai plant in Kagoshima Prefecture at a meeting, saying the utility has satisfied the new and stricter safety standards for nuclear facilities. After granting the plant preliminary approval in July, the regulator launched a 30-day public consultation period.
But before the final go-ahead, Kyushu Electric still needs to also obtain the consent from local authorities and undergo on-site operational checks to restart the reactors. The reactors are expected to resume operation in December at the earliest.
All of the country's workable 48 commercial reactors remain idled for maintenance or safety checks, with the last going offline in September 2013. The new safety guidelines, adopted in July 2013, were based on lessons from the 2011 March Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster. Under the new rules, nuclear power plant operators are for the first time obliged to take concrete steps to prepare for radiation leaks in case of severe accidents, such as huge tsunami and reactor core meltdowns. The power companies are also required to install an emergency control center to guard against acts of terrorism and natural disasters. Since last July, Kyushu Electric and nine other operators have applied for NRA's safety screenings for a total of 20 idled reactors at 13 plants.
Before the March 2011 atomic accident, nuclear plants in Japan, which is heavily dependent on Middle Eastern oil, produced 30 percent of its electricity. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office in December 2012, has been pushing for restart of reactors. The Fukushima plant, located 230 km north of Tokyo, was crippled in March 2011 by the magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami that caused explosions, meltdowns and massive leaks of radioactive material as the world's worst nuclear accident since the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.