MOSCOW (Sputnik) — This came less than two months after Osaka’s top court overturned a March 2016 ban on the restart of Takahama’s third and fourth reactors by a lower court that backed local residents’ claim they were not safe.
"Takahama Unit No.3 has completed all necessary preparatory inspections/activities, and the Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc., hereby announces that we have begun loading the core at 12:00 today [3:00GMT]," the KEPCO statement read.
Last week, the plant operator said it had completed fuel loading at the fourth reactor of the Takahama power plant. It will reportedly go back online later this month.
Concerns about the safety of nuclear plants were raised in Japan after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and a subsequent tsunami wave in 2011 crippled the Fukushima nuclear power plant, causing a meltdown and a huge contamination.