Naturally, safety is the country's chief concern as it returns to nuclear power -- the country has built stronger, higher tsunami walls near the new plant and says that it has instituted a ton of new safety rules to avoid future disaster. "The new regulations are incomparably (stricter) than those under the old system," Nuclear Regulation Authority chairman Shunichi Tanaka told Nikkei. "A disaster like that at Tokyo's Electric Power's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant will not occur."

Not everybody in Japan is as confident as the chairman, however -- protesters gathered in front of the plant earlier this week in opposition to the reactor restart. Regardless, the 31-year old reactor is scheduled to come back online Tuesday afternoon, and Japan needs it: energy prices in the country have risen almost 30-percent since 2011. The Sendai plant expects to be producing a surplus of electricity by the end of the week.

[Image Credit: ​AFP/Getty Images]