TOKYO, Nov 2: (AFP) - A nuclear reactor in southern Japan was to begin producing electricity again on Wednesday, its operator company said, in the first restart of a stalled atomic power plant since the Fukushima disaster.
Operations at the reactor began late on Tuesday, Kyushu Electric Power said, less than a month after the facility automatically shut down following a safety alert. "The reactor was restarted at 23:00 yesterday. Power generation is set to start this afternoon," a spokesman for the company told AFP.
The reactor at the Genkai nuclear plant, in southern Saga prefecture, is the first to resume operations since the massive earthquake and tsunami of March 11 sparked an atomic emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
The restart will come as a boost to Japan's beleaguered nuclear industry, which is battling a sceptical public largely unwilling to allow operations to restart at the dozens of stalled reactors nationwide.
Kyushu Electric officials, however, say the situation at Genkai is different from that of other suspended reactors, which are required to undergo government-mandated stress tests.
The reactor was halted after an "abnormality" in its steam condensing unit emerged on October 4, Kyodo news reported, adding that Industry Minister Yukio Edano, who oversees the sector, had attributed the fault to "human error". Kyushu Electric is to stop the reactor again in December for scheduled safety checks, the agency said.
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