Japan\u2019s major supplier of nuclear power generating equipment, France\u2019s Areva group, has announced Tokyo\u2019s plans to restart six reactors by the end of 2013. The other reactors will be restarted later \u2013 except the Fukushima-type made in the US.<\/p>\n
In addition to two reactors already put back into operation in Japan \u201cthere could be half a dozen reactors that will restart by the end of the year,\u201d the Chief Executive Officer of the French state-owned nuclear group announced at a press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think two-thirds of reactors will restart\u201d within several years, specified future plans Areva\u2019s CEO Luc Oursel.<\/p>\n
Oursel noted though that it will take years to get the green light for all Japan\u2019s nuclear reactors and some of them, like the notorious reactors at devastated Fukushima power plant, produced in the US by General Electric Company, would remain closed forever.<\/p>\n
While Japan\u2019s foreign partners remain optimistic about resurrection of nuclear power industry in the country, Japanese Kyodo press agency believes country\u2019s nuclear power generation facilities will remain frozen through 2013.<\/p>\n
Japan shut down all of its nuclear power generation facilities after the disastrous catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011, caused by a powerful earthquake followed by a devastating tsunami. The cooling systems of two reactors at the station went out of order and nuclear fuel melted down, flowing out of reactors\u2019 active zones and contaminating the territory irreparably.<\/p>\n
As a result, Tokyo declared complete outage of nuclear facilities in the country.<\/p>\n
The last reactor was stopped in Japan on May 5, 2012, leaving the country without nuclear power for the first time since 1970. But it took much less than a year for Tokyo to realize that the archipelago nation has no other means to ensure sufficient electric energy supply but to revert to nuclear power generation.<\/p>\n