Japan installs world's largest floating wind turbine to offset Fukushima loss

TOKYO, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Japanese engineers have installed a 344-foot floating wind turbine, the world's largest, that can withstand tsunamis and waves up to 65 feet high.

The 7 megawatt turbine was place about 12 miles off the coast of Fukushima, where a tsunami in 2011 devastated the coast and caused a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

The turbine is fastened to the seabed by four 20-ton anchors. Installation was previously delayed four times due to consecutive typhoons. The turbine will be able to move without being damaged during extreme weather conditions because the chains connecting the structure to the seabed are loosened.

"These turbines and anchors are designed to withstand 65-foot waves," Katsunobu Shimizu, a project engineer, told NBC News. "Also, here we can get 32-foot-tall tsunamis. That's why the chains are deliberately slackened."

Japan has imported an estimated $80 billion worth of fossil fuel since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, as all of Japan's nuclear reactors were later taken offline as a reaction and the island nation has few natural energy resources of its own. About 30 percent of Japan's energy came from nuclear sources before the tsunami.