Japan set to bring first nuke plant back online since Fukushima disaster amid public opposition

Kyushu Electric Power Co. said Monday it will restart operations at its Sendai nuclear power plant in Kagoshima Prefecture on Tuesday, making the plant the first to be brought back online following new safety regulations in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns.

Amid sizable antinuclear protests at the company's headquarters and around the site of the No. 1 reactor at the plant located on the southwestern main island of Kyushu, scheduled to be restarted Tuesday, the utility maintained the reactor was safe and would start generating power and distributing electricity on Friday, although transmission to the grid is scheduled to be ramped up in mid-August with an eye on full commercial operation in early September.

The reboot of the reactor will involve the control rods being removed at around 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, which will allow the process of nuclear fission to begin. The reactor, providing there are no problems, will reach criticality after about 12 hours, Kyushu Electric Power Co. said.

The utility also said it carried out final inspections of the control rods on Monday, and having become the first nuclear power plant in Japan to pass the stricter nuclear safety standards last September, will be the first power company to fire up a reactor in one year and 11 month since the last of the nation's reactors were taken off line for safety checks, following the Fukushima disaster, which was the worst commercial nuclear cataclysm since Chernobyl in 1986.

While Japan's top government spokesperson, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, told a press conference Monday that the government supports the restarting of nuclear plants that had cleared safety checks, stating: "Restarting nuclear plants that have been confirmed safe is important in our energy policy, which places nuclear power as a key electricity source," the move was blasted by the main opposition party.

Yukio Edano, secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan, lambasted the utility, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) who approved the restart, and the main Liberal Democratic Party's push to bring all the nation's reactors back online, saying: "It is clear that preparedness for evacuation is not enough in the event of a nuclear accident. I do not believe that there is any necessity now to rush to restart of the reactor at the Sendai plant," Edano told a press conference.

Despite the government heralding the NRA's new safety regulations as being "the toughest in the world," protests erupted around the country Monday comprising antinuclear civic groups and private citizens opposed to the restart, as the latest media polls showed that the majority of Japanese citizens oppose the restart -- the green lighting of which has caused Abe's support rate to plummet even further, following his forcing of contentious war bills through parliament recently to augment the scope of Japan's military.

According to a poll taken by the Mainichi Shimbun and released Monday, support for Abe, who is facing a party leadership election next month, has dropped 3 points to 32 percent, the lowest since he came into office for the second time in December 2012.

Of those polled by the popular daily, 57 percent said they were opposed to Kyushu Electric Power Co. restarting operations at its Sendai plant, with only 30 percent supporting the reboot. Endi