Japan set to renew its nuclear push 15 years after Fukushima

World’s largest nuclear plant to restart next year as country turns page on 20II disaster

- Walter Sim

Come 2026, Japan will fire up the world’s largest nuclear power plant again in a powerful signal that the nation is turning a page on the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, known colloquially as KK, shares the same operator as the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant - Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).

It is certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest plant by net output at 8.2GW, which is enough to power more than 13 million homes, and its restart will be the first time TEPCO is powering up a nuclear plant since the disaster.

KK, which began operations in 1985, has seven reactor units across a 4.2 sq km area along the coast of Niigata prefecture in eastern Japan. While it previously supplied electricity mainly to the Tokyo Metropolitan Region, the plant has been sitting idle.

On March 11, 2011, a 9-magnitude earthquake unleashed tsunami waves that triggered a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan, in one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents.

In the aftermath, Japan pulled the plug on nuclear power, mothballing all 54 of its reactors. It drew up stricter operation safety guidelines and established a new Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) to assess and enforce these standards.

The Sunday Times was recently granted a visit to KK, where TEPCO is preparing for the restart of Units 6 and 7, each with a 1.35GW capacity.

Post-Fukushima, global anxieties grew over nuclear power as a source of clean energy to combat climate change. But the passage of time, coupled with the urgency to secure clean alternatives to fossil energy, has led to a pendulum swing towards nuclear power.

But nowhere is this shift more evident than in Japan, where public sentiment has oscillated from vehement opposition to pragmatic acceptance over 15 years.