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Move to keep old Japanese nuclear reactors beyond use by date

UPDATE 3-Japan utilities push to extend life of nuclear plants, Jul 22, 2011

 * Kansai Electric files to keep 40-yr-old Mihama reactor running

* Chubu says to beef up tsunami defences at Hamaoka by Dec 2012

* Debate intensifies as safety fears square off vs economy worries

By Kaori Kaneko and Osamu Tsukimori, TOKYO, July 22 (Reuters) – Two Japanese utilities moved on Friday to extend the life of reactors at a pair of central coastal nuclear plants, fuelling already fierce debate over energy policy in the wake of the Fukushima radiation crisis.

Kansai Electric Power Co said it had filed a petition with Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency to keep the No. 2 reactor at its Mihama nuclear plant running beyond 2012, 40 years after it first went into operation.

Chubu Electric Power Co said it had completed plans to build a $1.3 billion wall to protect its Hamaoka plant from the kind of tsunami that knocked out reactor cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeast Japan after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Mihama is on the north coast and Hamaoka on the south coast, both southwest of Tokyo.

Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency will have to weigh the safety of both plants against a new set of tests at a time when public concern is high over both the risks of nuclear power and the economic costs of abandoning it

All the remaining reactors could be shut down by May for maintenance if public worries over safety continue to stall their restarts……

Critics, including leading earthquake experts, have warned that the plant’s location at the tip of a sandy peninsula jutting out into the Pacific also puts it at particular risk.

Chubu decommissioned the plant’s No.1 and No.2 reactors in 2009 after concluding it would cost too much to make them meet tougher seismic standards. It says the three other reactors on the site are now designed to withstand a magnitude 8.5 quake.

Kansai’s Mihama nuclear plant in Fukui has faced scrutiny because of the age of its three reactors, which were completed between 1970 and 1976…..

http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFL3E7IM02M20110722

July 23, 2011 - Posted by | business and costs, Japan

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