After the March 11th 2011 tsunami flooded the Fukushima reactors, Japan shut down its nuclear plants. The country went over to fossil fuels and suffered much higher price electricity. Pollution effects have been documented all over the country.
The trade-off with using nukes is between what can happen with nukes during an earthquake or tsunami vs. burning more carbon and poisoning the planet.
Japan is ending a two-year moratorium on use of nuclear power plants. One of the reactors is running today as part of the power grid. Some 30 of the country's 48 reactors are scheduled for reactivation.
Sendai Nuclear Power Plant is in Kagoshima prefecture. The design features automated provision of cooling water from very large pools at the reactor buildings. TEPCO and Kyushu Electric Power have agreed to support the highest level of security at the reopened plants.
The Abe Administration issued a one-page statement referring to economic impact and the negative environmental impacts of using carbon-fired plants.
Overall this seems sensible. Global warming is too dangerous for countries to go on burning carbon where they can avoid it. Power engineers learned what parts of nukes are vulnerable from the Fukushima flood out, so it makes sense to apply these lesson going forward.
Bad news for the oil, gas, and coal interests. They'll survive.