Japanese Nuclear Power Plant to Restart Early Next Year After Safety Measures

The world's largest nuclear power plant by generating capacity is expected to restart early in 2016 in Japan after safety improvement measures.

According to Bloomberg the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant owned by Tokyo Electric Power Co. is making big steps to improve safety and will be ready by early next year, according to the Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee.

Japan Times reported that the committee head Dale Klein, who is the former US Nuclear Regulatory Commission head, said, "From what we've seen with the physical improvements, I believe the plant is much safer than it has been in the past." According to Klein, the committee was positively impressed with the safety developments of the plants after they visited the site for the first time to evaluate the progress.

"The physical enhancements that have been made and the effort that they are making to develop a safety culture" shows that the facility is on its way to meeting international safety standards, said Klein.

In a report by Global Research TEPCO confirmed that there are workers who have developed leukemia from the radiation during the clean-up attempts for the last four years. Also, there are claims from medical professionals that thyroid cancer cases in the Fukushima Prefecture have increased to 230 the usual rate.

TEPCO would benefit a lot by reopening the reactors at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa. This is good news for the firm as it suffered from the decommissioning costs from Fukushima and the decrease in sales. Restarting the operations in the No. 6 and No. 7 reactors, Tepco could boost its profit by 28 billion yen, or $228 million, a month.

Since 2007, TEPCO has spent a total of 470 billion yen to enhance safety of the facilities and meet the latest standards. 7 reactors from Kashiwazaki-Kariwa were closed down after a fire incident during the 2007 earthquake. Some of those reactors restarted earlier. However, the Fukushima disaster in March 2011 has tightened the safety regulations of the reactors.