Four years and five months to the day after the crisis began at the Fukushima No. 1 power station, Japan formally returned to nuclear power Tuesday with the restart of Kyushu Electric Power Co.'s Sendai No. 1 reactor in Kagoshima Prefecture.
Despite nationwide public opposition, questions about plant safety, the practicality of disaster response plans and who will be responsible for them, the strongly pro-nuclear Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, as well as the politically powerful utilities, local Liberal Democratic Party politicians, and major corporations involved in the nuclear industry have pushed hard to bring as many reactors back online as possible.
The nuclear lobby strongly argues that atomic power is cheaper than importing oil or coal and will help curb greenhouse gas emissions.