nuclear-news

TEPCO worried about finances with nuclear power’s uncertain future

Tepco Head Fears End of Nuclear in Japan, WSJ,  By MARI IWATA, September 5, 2012,  TOKYO—The new head of Japan’s biggest electric company aired concerns about the possibility that Japan could phase out nuclear power, saying such a move would necessitate a “complete” revamping of its investment and fuel-procurement plans and could be detrimental to the country’s energy security as well…..
Mr. Hirose’s comments come the week before the administration of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is expected to announce a long-awaited decision on Japan’s future energy mix, following last year’s devastating accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant.
Japanese utilities and many big business have come out strongly in
support of maintaining the country’s nuclear fleet, which supplied
around 30% of the country’s electricity before the accident.

But public opinion polls have consistently shown a majority of the
population favors elimination of nuclear power, and Mr. Noda’s
government is now leaning toward recommending a phase-out by 2030.

That puts Tepco in a delicate situation: The utility is the owner and
operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant and is widely blamed by both
the public and investigatory panels as not having been sufficiently
prepared for the disasters that caused the accident. But it also
operates the country’s biggest nuclear-power facility, the
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture. It is depending on
that plant to come back online soon in order to bolster finances
drained by the cost of compensating victims of the accident as well as
buying expensive fossil fuels to make up for the loss of nuclear
power.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, along with all but two of Japan’s
reactors, remains temporarily shut down in the face of public fear
about safety.

“We will explain to local communities how we’ll prevent the same
things from happening” as occurred at Fukushima Daiichi, said Mr.
Hirose. “We’ll restart Kashiwazaki-Kariwa only if these communities
accept our explanations.”

Despite the uncertainty surrounding the restart of the plant, Mr.
Hirose said the company has no plans so far to revise a turnaround
plan that calls for at least one reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa to
restart by April 2013.

If no reactors come back online for the long term, Tepco will have to
rely more on liquefied natural gas, as it replaces inefficient,
oil-fired temporary turbines set up right after the Fukushima accident
with permanent and more efficient gas-fired power plants, Mr. Hirose
said….. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444273704577633393350192040.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

September 6, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Japan