OSAKA — Monju, a nuclear reactor designed to generate more plutonium than it burns, resumed operation Thursday morning in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, 14 years and five months after a sodium coolant leak and subsequent fire inside the plant shut it down.
The restart of the so-called fast-breeder reactor marks the start of the government's second attempt to complete a long-delayed program aimed at using such reactors to reduce Japanese dependence on foreign oil.
But antinuclear activists warn of safety problems while scientists and others are concerned about the increased nuclear proliferation risks that fast-breeders represent. They say the troubled Monju is setting a bad example at the Nonproliferation Treaty talks now taking place in New York.