The Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) in Japan announced Tuesday that it intended to restart the Takahama Unit 4 reactor on Wednesday, May 17. It expected the reactor to reach criticality on Thursday, May 18.
After undergoing a series of ascension tests, it is expected to return to commercial operating status in the middle of June.
The reactor had been approved for a restart in 2015 and was restarted in February 2016. However, the reactor, long mothballed in a nuclear power moratorium following the Fukushima Daiichi disaster of 2011, automatically shut down after three days. The reactor's fate was then caught up in a court-ordered injunction, which was rescinded in March by the Osaka High Court, which overturned a lower court's ruling