The victory of Yoichi Masuzoe in Tokyo’s gubernatorial election Sunday could be a boost for Japan’s return to nuclear power, though the anti-nuclear camp still urges against it. Masuzoe wants less dependence on nuclear power in the long run, while his main rivals, former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa and Kenji Utsunomiya, a former head of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, favored an immediate end to nuclear power. Utsunomiya won about 983,200 votes and Hosokawa about 956,000 votes against Masuzoe’s approximately 2,112,000 votes, the Japan Times reported Monday. All of Japan’s 48 operable nuclear reactors remain offline, pending safety checks after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami. Prior to the Fukushima crisis, nuclear power provided nearly 30 percent of Japan’s electricity Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe , who has called for restarting Japan’s idled nuclear […]