Japan's industry ministry will send senior officials to Niigata prefecture on Thursday to seek local support for restarting Tokyo Electric Power's (Tepco's) Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station, the minister said on Tuesday.

The move comes after Japan's nuclear power regulator in December lifted an operating ban on the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, allowing it to work towards gaining local permission to restart.

Tepco has been eager to bring the world's largest atomic power plant back online to cut operating costs, but that needs the consent of the local governments of Niigata prefecture, Kashiwazaki city and Kariwa village, where it is located.

Industry minister Ken Saito said he called the heads of the local governments late Monday to explain the ministry's nuclear power policy, and would dispatch Yoshifumi Murase, commissioner of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, and others to Niigata to seek their support in obtaining local consent.

"We intend to proceed carefully, taking into account local circumstances," Saito told a news conference on Tuesday.

Murase will meet Niigata Governor Hideyo Hanazumi while another senior official will meet the heads of Kashiwazaki city and Kariwa village.

Asked when the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant might restart, Saito said he could not comment on the timing.

With a capacity of 8,212 megawatts (MW), the plant has been offline since 2012 after the Fukushima disaster a year earlier led to the shutdown of all nuclear plants in Japan at the time.

Resources-poor Japan is eager to bring more of its nuclear plants online to reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels such as liquefied natural gas (LNG). (Reporting by Yuka Obayashi Editing by Mark Potter)