Japan to restart troubled nuke reactor

A nuclear power plant that automatically shut down after a fault on Oct. 4 will be restarted late on Tuesday, according to officials from the plant's owner Kyushu Electric Power Company. The nuclear power plant, located in the town of Genkai, Saga Prefecture, will have its No. 4 reactor brought back online Tuesday evening and the utility plans to resume normal power generation functions on Wednesday, officials from Kyushu Power Co. said. The No. 4 reactor automatically shut down on Oct. 4 following irregularities found in its steam condenser. But despite some local residents opposition to the reactor being restarted, Saga Governor Yasushi Furukawa and Genkai Mayor Hideo Kishimoto gave the utility the all-clear to resume operations. The central government said resuming operations at the plant was the choice of its operator, but industry minister Yukio Edano, also responsible for overseeing the government's nuclear and industrial safety agency, urged the utility on Tuesday to take into account the feelings of local citizens. Although there were some 200 phone calls to the utility saying otherwise, Kyushu Electric Power Co. chairman Shingo Matsuo said he thought the local people approved of the reactor being restarted. "We believe that we have obtained local understanding," Matsuo told local media earlier Tuesday. Separately, the Japanese government said Tuesday that it will permit domestic and foreign media crews to enter facilities at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant on November 12. It is the first time the government has allowed media representatives to inspect the facilities, since a massive earthquake and tsunami knocked out key cooling functions there on March 11, leading to an ongoing nuclear crisis. Goshi Hosono, Japan's minister in charge of the nuclear disaster, assured domestic and international media representatives that the facility was safe and said that he too would be visiting the No. 1 plant in Fukushima as it approaches a stable state known as "cold shutdown". According to the government and the plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant is expected to reach this state by the end of this year, prior to a lengthy decommissioning process.