Japan Approves Restart of Third Nuclear Reactor

Japan’s nuclear regulator signed off on the basic safety of a reactor at a third nuclear plant on Wednesday, as the country inches toward rebooting its atomic industry more than four years after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

The decision will be a boost for operator Shikoku Electric Power, which relied on its sole Ikata nuclear power station in southwestern Japan for about 40 percent of its electricity output before the meltdowns at Fukushima led to the shutdown of all the country’s reactors.

For the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, resuming nuclear power, which provided about a third of Japan’s electricity supply before Fukushima, is key to lifting the economy out of two decades of anemic growth.

The country has switched to fossil fuels to compensate for the closure of reactors, pushing imports of liquefied natural gas to a record-high 7.78 trillion yen ($65 billion) in the financial year ended March 31.

via CNBC

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza