An anti-nuclear Japanese governor stepped down on Wednesday after a magazine alleged he paid university students for sex, a resignation that could boost the government’s plan to restart the country’s mothballed reactors.
Ryuichi Yoneyama was elected governor of Niigata prefecture in 2016 on a pledge to prevent the restarting of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa power station, the world’s biggest nuclear plant, about 200 kilometres (130 miles) northwest of Tokyo.