Japan Nuclear Power-Free as Last Reactor Shuts

Japan, the third largest economy in the world, has relied on nuclear energy to provide 30% of its energy for four decades, but this weekend it became the first major, modern economy to operate without nuclear power.On Saturday the Tomari Nuclear Power Plant’s reactor 3 shut down, leaving Japan’s energy grid completely nuclear free.Junichi Sato of Greenpeace in Japan said that, “there is an increased chance of earthquakes in Japan, so that has a significant risk to the Japanese people and the Japanese economy.

TOKYO — Power was restored Friday to a cooling system at a tsunami-damaged nuclear plant in Japan that failed for the second time in a month after an outage caused by construction work to keep out rats suspected of setting off the earlier blackout. Power for the cooling system for a storage pool for fuel was restored after a two-hour break at reactor No. 3, and there was no immediate danger from the breakdown, according to Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that operates Fukushima Dai-ichi in northeastern Japan.