by Our Foreign Desk

THE Kyushu Electric Power plant operator announced yesterday that it will restart the No 1 reactor at its Sendai nuclear plant in southern Japan this morning.

This will be the first nuclear restart under new safety requirements following the Fukushima disaster and a milestone in Japan’s return to nuclear power.

It breaks a four-and-half-year nuclear power impasse since the 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in north-eastern Japan which followed an earthquake and tsunami.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority affirmed the safety of the Sendai reactor and another one at the plant last September under stricter safety rules imposed after the accident.

The Sendai No 1 reactor is scheduled to start generating power on Friday and reach full capacity next month.

“Our policy is to push forward restarts of reactors that cleared the world’s toughest safety screening by the Nuclear Regulation Authority,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said yesterday.

His government set a goal earlier this year for nuclear power to provide more than 20 per cent of energy needs by 2030.

Residents near the Sendai plant oppose the restart, citing potential dangers from active volcanos in the region.

Dozens of protesters, including Naoto Kan, who was prime minister at the time of the Fukushima crisis, rallied outside the Sendai plant in a last-ditch effort to stop the restart, shouting: “We don’t need nuclear plants.”

The Fukushima disaster “exposed the myth of safe and cheap nuclear power, which turned out to be dangerous and expensive,” Mr Kan told the crowd. “Why are we trying to resume nuclear power?” he asked.