A team of experts from the U.N. nuclear agency inspected the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant Wednesday for a review of its discharge of treated radioactive wastewater into the Pacific. The International Atomic Energy Agency inspection was part of a four-day visit to Japan that started Tuesday, its second since the water discharge began last August despite strong protests from fishing groups and neighboring China, which has banned Japanese seafood. The IAEA team will issue a report later.
The world is witnessing a nuclear renaissance as Tepco loads fuel rods into the world's largest nuclear power plant, signaling the potential for clean and reliable electricity generation.
The operator of the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said on Monday that it has obtained permission from safety regulators to start loading atomic fuel into a reactor at its only operable plant in north-central Japan, which it is keen to restart for the first time since the 2011 disaster. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, or TEPCO, said that it obtained the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s approval to load nuclear fuel into the No. 7 reactor at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata and it was to start the process later Monday. The loading of the 872 sets of fuel assemblies is expected to take a few weeks.