Mitsubishi Heavy to Enjoy Record Year on Japan's Nuclear Reactor Restarts
By Reuters | 04 Mar, 2026

Japan has restarted 15 of its 33 reactors which were shut down in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, including one at the nation's largest nuclear power plant.

Nuclear reactor restarts in Japan will lift sales at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' (MHI) nuclear power unit to a record 400 billion yen ($2.54 billion) next business year, well ahead of earlier forecasts, the company's chief financial officer said.

"Originally, we were saying it might reach 400 billion yen around 2030," Hiroshi Nishio told Reuters in an interview. MHI will increase headcount in its reactor-making division by about 10% next year as orders grow, he added. 

Fifteen years after the tsunami-triggered Fukushima nuclear disaster shut down Japan's nuclear industry, the country has restarted 15 of its 33 operable reactors. 

Japan's government says it needs to turn them back on to cut imports of oil and gas, which account for about two-thirds of the country's power generation. Much of that fossil fuel comes from the Middle East where supplies have been disrupted following U.S. and Israeli air attacks on Iran. 

Restarts reached a milestone last month when Fukushima operator Tokyo Electric Power Co switched on the first of seven idle reactors at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, the world's largest nuclear power station, about 220 km (136 miles) northwest of Tokyo.

MHI, which is supporting the restarts, is developing a next-generation reactor with Japanese utilities that it says will be safer than the ones that melted down at Fukushima. 

In the wake of the 2011 disaster, MHI sustained its nuclear business partly through work at the Rokkasho spent-fuel reprocessing plant, which separates reusable uranium and plutonium from high-level radioactive waste, Nishio said.

"We maintained people and technology under the conviction that nuclear power would inevitably need to restart." 

($1 = 157.4300 yen)

(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Tomasz Janowski)