Following the March 2011 tsunami and subsequent accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, all reactors in Japan have had to get regulatory approval to restart. In December 2022 the government adopted a policy maximizing the use of existing reactors by restarting as many of them as possible, whilst also developing advanced reactors to replace those that are shut down. 

In July 2023 and September 2023 respectively, Takahama 1&2 became the 11th and 12th Japanese reactors to resume operation. Takahama 1 had entered a regular inspection outage in January 2011, two months before the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant; Takahama 2 was taken offline in November 2011.

In April 2024 Tepco said it planned to begin loading fuel into unit 7 of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant following approval by Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA). The unit is expected to be restarted in  October 2024. Onagawa 2 was due to restart in May, but this date has now been pushed back to September. In November 2023 the NRA approved the operation of Sendai 1&2 for a further 20 years. The NRA approved the same for Takahama 3&4 in May 2024.

Nuclear electricity generation by age of reactor