Japan's new leaders to review post-Fukushima policy

Japan's new leaders set to work Thursday, Dec 27, on dismantling plans to rid the country of nuclear power by 2040, pledging to review a post-Fukushima policy.

The pro-business Liberal Democratic Party-led government also said they would give the green light to any reactors deemed safe by regulators, indicating shuttered power stations could start coming back online.

"We need to reconsider the previous administration's policy that aimed to make zero nuclear power operation possible during the 2030s," Toshimitsu Motegi told a news conference.

Shinzo Abe, who was elected as prime minister and unveiled his cabinet line-up on Wednesday, appointed Motegi as his economy, trade and industry minister, also in charge of supervising the nuclear industry.

In June then-prime minister Yoshihiko Noda ordered the restarting of reactors at Oi amid fears of a summer power shortage, but he vowed ahead of the election to phase out nuclear power by 2040.

Motegi said abandoning Japan's only reprocessing plant for spent nuclear fuel at Rokkasho in the far north "is not an option".

Some experts have warned the plant could sit on an active seismic fault and would be vulnerable to a massive earthquake.

If regulators agree they will have to order its closure and Japan would be without any recycling capacity of its own.

Resource-poor Japan, which relied on atomic power for around a third of its electricity has poured billions of dollars into its nuclear fuel recycling program, in which uranium and plutonium are extracted from spent fuel for re-use in nuclear power plants.