The city assembly and the mayor of Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture, have given their nod to the restart of Kyushu Electric Power Co.'s Sendai nuclear power plant, whose Nos. 1 and 2 pressurized light-water reactors, each with a generation capacity of 890,000 kW, cleared the Nuclear Regulation Authority's screening in September under new safety standards that came into force after the March 2011 meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The Kagoshima prefectural assembly and Gov. Yuichiro Ito are also expected to approve the plan as early as this week, setting the stage for the first restart of an idled nuclear power plant under the updated standards.
Still, the concerns of many of the local residents have been left unanswered, especially those over the evacuation plans that would come into effect during a major accident at the Sendai plant.
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