FUKUSHIMA PREFECTURE, Japan — Fifteen years ago, this mountainous region on Japan’s northeast coast suffered one of the world’s worst nuclear power accidents. Abandoned homes, offices and shops still dot the landscape — remnants of the evacuation after an earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and released radiation. In the accident’s aftermath, nuclear power’s future seemed bleak, with Japan shutting off all its reactors as public opinion soured against the technology.

But the country is now rapidly moving to restart nuclear power plants, as artificial intelligence increases electricity demand and foreign wars throttle natural gas supply. Japan relies on natural gas for 30 percent of its electricity, almost all of it imported. The Iran war has further helped the case for nuclear, which can displace some of the liquefied natural gas that is stuck in the Persian Gulf.

This week, Japan will open its 16th reactor since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident — at a nuclear plant run by the same utility that oversaw Daiichi during the meltdown. Toyoshi Fuketa, former chair of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, said the debate over whether to go back to nuclear power took years. “After the accident, we had furious discussions,” Fuketa said in an interview.

“One of the most influential issues was the war in Ukraine. This country heavily relied on the natural gas imported from Russia, and all the energy sources are coming from the outside.” Japan stopped expanding its use of Russian gas when the country invaded Ukraine, and aims to become less reliant on those imports. Now, the Iran war risks forcing the country to cut back on its gas imports from other countries.

About 10 percent of Japan’s LNG imports come through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran all but closed after the U.S-Israel attacks began in late February. Washington and Tehran announced Friday that the strait is reopening for commercial shipping, but the chokepoint remains for roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil. The Northeast Asia LNG benchmark, which captures deliveries to Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan, reached a three-year high earlier this year.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi hopes to double Japan’s nuclear power production by 2040. But Japanese residents aren’t fully sold on nuclear power. Polling by Hiroshi Yamagata, a researcher at Nagaoka University of Technology, shows that only 37 percent of Japan supports restarting nuclear power plants, compared with 23 percent opposed and 40 percent uncertain.

Only 24 percent support building new plants. Those tensions were tested as Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, put reactor 6 at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant into commercial operation Thursday — the company’s first return to nuclear since the Fukushima nuclear accident. Environmental groups, like Friends of the Earth, joined some local residents and protested the restart, citing Tepco’s handling of the Fukushima disaster, security management at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa and control rod malfunctions that delayed the planned restart earlier this year.

But even in Iwaki, the nearest big city to the 2011 disaster, these nuclear resurrections aren’t black and white. “The new plant is in Niigata prefecture, it’s not in Fukushima, and the people around the plant agreed to have the reactor. We cannot make that decision,” said Yujiro Igari, speaking through an interpreter.

Igari is the manager of Iwaki’s Crisis Management Division, which directs citywide disaster preparedness. “People in this area just hope for the Japanese government to take care of the reactor and take responsibility.” From energy town to ghost town Futaba is nestled in the shadow of the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Built on coal mining in the 1890s, it was reborn as a nuclear power town in the 1970s.

That’s when Tepco began construction on the “Daiichi” and “Daini” plants, which translate as “first” and “second.” The utility put time and money into getting community buy-in, even sponsoring contests where children made pro-nuclear posters that are now on display at the Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Memorial Museum. One sixth grader designed a massive sign that was erected over Futaba’s main street in 1991. It read: “Nuclear power: the energy for a bright future.” The nuclear power plants brought stability to the old coal town.

While Fukushima prefecture’s population declined by about 5 percent between 1970 and 1995, Futaba — anchored by the plants’ jobs — grew by roughly 12 percent.That all changed on March 11, 2011. That day saw a 9.1 magnitude quake — the worst in the country’s history — spawning waves that crested at 13 meters. That’s 3 meters higher than the region’s previous record — and 7 meters higher than architects had designed the nuclear plants to withstand.

Daini was successfully brought to a safe shutdown. But at Daiichi, rising core temperatures melted fuel capsules into hydrogen gas. The next day, the trapped hydrogen gas explod