Antinuclear

A visitor is silhouetted next to binoculars as he looks at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, which is the world’s biggest, at an observatory of its exhibition hall in Kashiwazaki

NIIGATA, Japan (Reuters) – A regional election north of Tokyo between candidates most Japanese have never heard of may decide the fate of the world’s biggest nuclear plant and mark a turning point for an industry all but shut down after the Fukushima disaster.

The campaign for governor of Niigata Prefecture has boiled down to two men and one issue: whether to restart the seven-reactor Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station.

Reviving the seven-reactor giant, with capacity of 8 gigawatts, is key to saving Tokyo Electric Power, which was brought low by the 2011 Fukushima explosions and meltdowns, and then the repeated admissions of cover-ups and safety lapses after the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.