On Sunday evening
amidst huge public protests, engineers at the Kansai Electric Company pulled
out the control rods in the Oi reactor core number three allowing nuclear
fusion to resume.
AsianScientist (Jul. 3, 2012) –
On Sunday evening amidst huge public protests, engineers at the Kansai Electric
Company pulled out the control rods in the Oi reactor core number three
allowing nuclear fusion to resume.
It was a historic moment since it marked the restart of a
nuclear plant which had been shut down along with 49 other units
post-Fukushima.
The operator hoped to have a sustained nuclear reaction
by Monday morning and the first transmission of electricity on Wednesday. Japan
depends upon nuclear energy for about one-third of its electric supply.
The decision to restart the
reactor was taken during a cabinet meeting by Japanese Prime Minister
Yoshihiko Noda on June 17, 2012. The PM explained that it was necessary to
restart the reactor to !void power shortages in the heavily urbanized Kansai
region.
But at the same time Noda also said that Japan must think
of ways to do away on its dependence on nuclear energy in a phased manner.
The restarting was marked by a series of public protests,
and over the weekend more than 200 protestors blocked the road to the plant.
Kansai Electric said that it had enough employees to restart the reactor.
But a report in the Monday’s edition of The New
York Times stated that a senior vice president from the ministry in
charge of nuclear power had to be ferried to the plant by boat.
In Tokyo about 1,0p0 protestors marched on Sunday in the
central part of the city, two days after tens of thousands of people chanted
anti-nuclear slogans outside the PM’s residence.
Meanwhile in India officials of the Nuclear Power
Corporation have indicated that the first unit of the controversial Kudankulam
atomic power station in Tamil Nadu could become operational by August 2012 and
the second unit by March 2013.
——
Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine.
No comments:
Post a Comment