Nuke Reactors: Restart approved to save economy

Japan’s fuel purchases soared as reactors were shut down, put through safety checks after the meltdowns at Fukushima

TOKYO: Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and three other ministers approved the restarts of two nuclear reactors at a meeting on Saturday.  Noda has said the restarts are necessary to avoid damaging the world’s third-largest economy. Japan’s fuel purchases soared as reactors were shut down and put through safety checks after the meltdowns at Fukushima in March 2011, dragging its economy into its first trade deficit in more than three decades. Japan’s decision to restart two nuclear reactors idled for safety checks after the Fukushima catastrophe will not cut the country’s spiraling fossil-fuel import bill unless more atomic units are brought back on line, traders and analysts said.  In May, when Japan went without nuclear power for the first time since 1970, power companies consumed a record 4.41 million tons equivalent of liquefied natural gas, worth an estimated $3.7 billion.

Published In The Express Tribune, June 17^th, 2012.