TEPCO takes risk over soaring costs at Tokai nuclear plant

The Tokai No. 2 nuclear power plant in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, in July last year

March 15, 2019

Tokyo Electric Power Co. and other utilities are taking a huge gamble by providing hundreds of billions of yen (billions of dollars) to restart an aging nuclear power plant in need of safety upgrades.

Japan Atomic Power Co. intends to resume operations of the one reactor at the Tokai No. 2 nuclear plant in Ibaraki Prefecture in January 2023, but 300 billion yen–nearly double the initial estimate–is reportedly needed to ensure its safety.

TEPCO, which will be provided with electricity from the Tokai plant, will offer 190 billion yen, or two-thirds of the total cost. Tohoku Electric Power Co., Chubu Electric Power Co., Kansai Electric Power Co. and Hokuriku Electric Power Co. will also offer financial support.

But it remains unclear whether municipalities around the plant will approve the plan to restart the reactor.

If Japan Atomic Power fails to win consent from the local governments and is forced to scrap the Tokai No. 2 plant, TEPCO and other power distributors could suffer big financial losses.

TEPCO was effectively turned into a state property after the crisis unfolded at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011. With taxpayers’ money injected into it, TEPCO’s plan to offer assistance to another operator’s nuclear facility that has no clear prospects of restarting will inevitably provoke controversy.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201903150001.html

1 Comment »

They will foist the high level waste from it on the USA and elsewhere

Comment by Doug | March 18, 2019 | Reply

1.This Month

United Nations: demasking the Torture of Julian Assange. Rico Brouwer and Nils Melzer

Three Mile Island (& Fukushima) Lies & Cover-Ups w/ Gundersen & Wasserman

Energy efficiency – theme for July 2019

Energy efficiency represents the single largest potential contributor to global emissions reduction, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA 2017). It should be a key part of the global energy strategy, for several reasons:

It could reduce global electric demand by more than 20 per cent, based on current rates in the U.S. power sector, while maintaining high levels of services such as heating and lighting.
It avoids the need for increased energy, capacity and grid services, making it the least expensive way to decarbonise at scale.
It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by billions of tonnes.

A dramatic example of the power of energy efficiency is lighting. In 2017 the United States passed the milestone of 1 billion LED and CFL lights installed, avoiding 142 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide emissions, at a cost of about $7 per ton of avoided carbon dioxide. In contrast, the cumulative installed capacity of rooftop solar reached 8,000 MW in 2017, saving 8 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide, at a cost of $360 per ton. Lighting efficiency thus yielded almost 18 times the avoided carbon dioxide, at about 2 per cent the cost per ton of rooftop solar.

Google provides another example of the power of energy efficiency. Its data centers now use 50 per cent less energy than the average data center, according to the company. Google also developed an improved chip, the TPU, which performs 83 times better than standard CPUs. The new chip allowed Google to reduce power consumption at its data centers by a factor of 30—far exceeding the effect on Google’s carbon footprint of all of the company’s renewable energy purchases. ” – John Woolard, Eco Business, 10 June 2019

nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope