nuclear-news

Japan’s TEPCO nationalised, will restart another nuclear power plant

Tepco’s New Chief Sees No Plan B To Revive Profitability Bloomberg, By Tsuyoshi Inajima and Yuji Okada – Jun 27, 2012 Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501), owner of the crippled Fukushima reactors, is committed to restarting another nuclear plant next year that is the world’s largest and itself was damaged in a 2007 earthquake.

Bringing the Kashiwazaki Kariwa power station online, even though it sets up the state-controlled utility for further conflicts with a nuclear-weary public, is part of “Plan A,” President Naomi Hirose, 59, said in an interview. The plan refers to a 10-year business
reconstruction that handed control of the power company known as Tepco to Japan’s government.
We have no choice right now but to do our best to carry out Plan A,”
Hirose said on June 18. “We don’t have a Plan B.”
Tepco’s decision runs counter to polls showing the majority of
Japanese want less reliance on atomic power after meltdowns at its
Fukushima Dai-Ichi reactors last year. The radiation release and cost
to the public of as much as $138 billion sparked anti-nuclear
sentiment across the world. ….
“Tepco’s plan is only wishful thinking” because no more reactors are
likely to be approved this year, said Tomoko Murakami, a Tokyo-based
nuclear analyst at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan. “Without
the restart, there is not much hope to revive the company.”
Price Increase
Restarting the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant and raising power
prices are the key planks of the plan that includes a 1 trillion yen
($12.6 billion) bailout. Delaying the restart or power price increases
by more than a year may force the government to increase the bailout,
Hirofumi Kawachi, a Tokyo- based analyst at Mizuho Investors
Securities Co.
“We have to steadily carry out the first steps of the business plan,”
said Hirose, who was officially approved yesterday as the utility’s
new president by shareholders and the board of directors.
Those first steps are unlikely to be as steady as Hirose hopes
for…….. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-27/tepco-s-new-chief-sees-no-plan-b-to-revive-profitability.html

June 28, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Japan, politics