Japan’s Tohoku Electric Power has received the green light from a local governor to restart one of its nuclear reactors, nearly a decade after it was damaged in the Fukushima disaster.
After restart, Onagawa No. 2 would be Tohoku Electric’s first nuclear unit brought online since the 2011 disaster, and the first reactor restarted on the northeast Pacific coast of Japan since all reactors were shut down in the wake of the catastrophe. Tohoku received regulatory approval to restart the reactor in February. The company has not set a date for rebooting the unit as other processes need signoff from regulators and Tohoku Electric is still working on safety measures that are due to be finished in the year starting March 2022. Further, the company expects to spend 340 billion yen ($3.1 billion) on safety upgrades at the Onagawa plant.