nuclear-news

As massive sea wall slowly erected, no sign of restart at Japan’s biggest nuclear plant

Four years before Fukushima, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant was damaged by an earthquake, triggering a fire and radiation leaks

Japan’s Tepco sees no quick re-start for biggest nuclear plant Planet Ark,  14-Nov-12  Risa Maeda and Aaron Sheldrick Tokyo Electric Power Co sees no imminent resumption of operations at the world’s biggest nuclear plant, shut down after last year’s Fukushima disaster, further raising its costs as it spends more on fossil fuels to generate electricity.

A wall to protect the 8,212-megawatt Kashiwazaki-Kariwa station’s seven reactors against tsunamis will not be finished until June next year, said Shiro Arai, deputy site manager.

“It is too premature to talk about when reactor restarts will happen,”
Arai told Reuters in an interview at the plant in Niigata prefecture
on Japan’s northwest coast….. All of Japan’s nuclear plants were
shut down after the accident, the world’s worst since 1986, and public
fear about nuclear safety has made it hard to persuade authorities to
agree to approve the restart of plants.

Prospects also appear dim for any quick restarts as safety standards,
to be drawn up by a new nuclear watchdog, will probably not be issued
until the middle of next year.

Tokyo Electric Power Co, known as Tepco, needs to get
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa running to reduce fuel costs, which totaled 1.34
trillion yen ($16.87 billion) in the six months through September when
none of its reactors were online.

Restarting Kashiwazaki was also a central plank of the bailout of
Tepco by the government, which injected 1 trillion yen of capital into
the utility in July. Tepco also got a commitment from its banks to
lend it another 1 trillion yen based on getting the reactors operating
again to reduce losses.

Tepco President Naomi Hirose said two weeks ago that Tepco remained
committed to starting the first of the plant’s seven reactors in
April. But Tepco’s lack of transparency after the Fukushima disaster
is a major concern, especially for those living in the shadow of the
plant.
Four years before Fukushima, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant was damaged by an earthquake, triggering a fire and radiation leaks. At the time of the Fukushima disaster, three of its reactors were still being repaired and were not operational……

Tepco is building tsunami walls to a height of 15 meters (50 feet)
above sea level around the two clusters of reactors. The wall
surrounding reactor No. 5, 6 and 7 has been completed but the defenses
around the older 4 reactors are still being built……
http://planetark.org/enviro-news/item/67124

November 15, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Japan, politics