The operator of the Sendai nuclear power plant in southern Japan submitted an application on Friday to the country’s regulator to get final approval for putting one of its reactors online.
Kyushu Electric Power Company is hoping to turn on the reactor as early as August 10th.
The utility has completed the assembly of the reactor core after loading nearly 160 fuel rod assemblies into the plant’s No.1 reactor in early July.
It has also finished checking a water level gauge system for the containment vessel and confirmed that it is working normally.
Kyushu Electric Power will also conduct a drill starting from Monday to train for a possible severe accident. The exercise is mandated by the government’s new regulations to be performed before a reactor is restarted.
If no problems are found, the No. 1 reactor will go online as early as August 10th.
Last year the plant cleared the government’s new regulations introduced after the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. It was the first nuclear facility in Japan to do so
Japan’s nuclear regulators have begun testing a new radiation data-publicizing system for residents near a power plant.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority says it has begun to test-run the system it has developed in an area surrounding the Sendai nuclear power plant in Kagoshima Prefecture, western Japan.
Kyushu Electric Power Company aims to bring the plant back online next month.
The new system enables the central government and municipalities to provide their radiation data online for other organizations as well as for local residents during emergencies.
The system will allow users to access a special site on the Authority’s website to obtain such data in the event of a nuclear accident.
In the case of the Sendai plant, the website provides updated figures from 73 observation points within a 30-kilometer radius from the plant, as well as from cars equipped with radiation-monitoring equipment.
Figures are colored in red or yellow when they exceed government standards.
New nuclear emergency guidelines call for the evacuation of residents within a 5- to 30-kilometer radius from a power plant if radiation levels exceed the government limit.
The government reviewed the guidelines following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident.
The regulators say they will fully launch the system in August after one month of testing. They say they will also set up web sites for other nuclear power plants.
Kyushu Electric Power Co. will have the No. 1 reactor at the Sendai nuclear power plant in Kagoshima Prefecture back online as early as Aug. 10, according to sources.
The utility will begin producing electricity several days after the restart and resume commercial operations in mid-September, the sources added July 10.
Kyushu Electric is currently undergoing the final procedures toward the restart of the reactor under the new safety standards of the Nuclear Regulation Authority. The utility began loading nuclear fuel into the No. 1 reactor in the afternoon of July 7, and completed the work before dawn on July 10.
Kyushu Electric will continue to have NRA inspections of equipment related to the reactor. It will also hold a four-day safety drill from July 27 that will replicate conditions of a severe accident at the plant, which is located in the city of Satsuma-Sendai.
Kyushu Electric has completed loading nuclear fuel into a reactor at Sendai Nuclear Station,
The last rod assembly —the 157th — was embedded into the reactor at 12:12 a.m. Friday, ending an operation that engaged some 50 workers around the clock since the loading process started Tuesday at the station in Kagoshima Prefecture, a company official said.
Subject to inspection clearance by the government’s Nuclear Regulation Authority in the coming days, Kyushu Electric is envisaging firing up the reactor around Aug. 10 to start trial power transmission three days later.
The reactor is expected to be geared up to full steam later in the month before starting commercial power transmission in September, a move that would likely bring relief to the company, which has been reeling from losses caused by hefty fossil fuel costs to run conventional power plants with all its six nuclear reactors idled.
The resumption of the reactor — one of the two at the Sendai plant — will mark the restart of nuclear power generation in Japan that has been at a standstill due to safety concerns following the ongoing triple meltdown disaster at the Fukushima plant. None of Japan’s commercial reactors has been online for nearly two years.
If the nuclear authority finds any problem, Kyushu Electric will be required to address it and this may result in the restart being delayed.
The utility is aiming to reload fuel into the second reactor at the Sendai plant in early September and reboot it in mid-October.
To mind that this article is from Yomiuri, a pro-government newspaper
Two years have passed since new safety standards were introduced requiring utilities to strengthen their measures to prevent serious accidents at nuclear facilities as a result of major earthquakes or tsunami, requirements put in place following the crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Safety inspections are under way at 25 reactors at the nation’s 15 nuclear power plants. However, only five reactors at three nuclear plants, including the Nos. 1 and 2 reactors at Kyushu Electric Power. Co.’s Sendai plant, have been approved as meeting the new standards.
Given the time-consuming process of post-approval checks, all of Japan’s nuclear power plants continue to remain offline.
In September 2014, the Sendai nuclear plant in Kagoshima Prefecture cleared the new safety standards set by the Nuclear Regulation Authority. Kyushu Electric started loading fuel into the Sendai plant’s No. 1 reactor on Tuesday, which is highly likely to be brought online as early as mid-August.
Screenings have been completed for Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Nos. 3 and 4 reactors at its Takahama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture, but a time frame for resuming operations is not yet in sight. The Fukui District Court had issued a provisional disposition order to forbid the restart of the reactors.
Regarding Shikoku Electric Power Co.’s No. 3 reactor at its Ikata nuclear plant in Ehime Prefecture, the NRA will likely issue a screening certificate verifying that the reactor satisfies safety standards.
Safety screenings are progressing more slowly for 10 reactors at eight nuclear power plants, including TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture, which uses boiling water reactors like the ones at the Fukushima No. 1 plant.
Estimates of maximum seismic vibrations, which form the basis for safety measures, have yet to be finalized for these reactors.
KEPCO is aiming to extend the operational period of its aging Nos. 1 and 2 reactors at its Takahama nuclear plant, as well as the No. 3 reactor at its Mihama plant, also in Fukui Prefecture, to more than 40 years. Forty years is the maximum period generally allowed by the state.
The three reactors must pass screenings and other inspections by July next year and November next year in accordance with state regulations, raising the issue of the need to speed up the inspection process.
“The new safety standards have set considerably high standards,” NRA Chairman Shunichi Tanaka said at a press conference on Wednesday, “so I believe utilities are having to take some time to satisfy those requirements.”
SATSUMASENDAI, Kagoshima — Kyushu Electric Power Co. started work to load nuclear fuel into the No. 1 reactor at the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant on July 7, sparking mixed reactions among local residents.
If the reactor restart at the Sendai plant goes ahead as planned, it will be the first such reactivation under stricter safety requirements adopted after the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant meltdowns in March 2011.
About 120 people including local residents gathered in front of the main gate of the Sendai nuclear power complex on the morning of July 7. Holding banners which read, “Loading of nuclear fuel is a step toward accidents,” they shouted, “We will never condone reactivation,” and, “Kyushu Electric should abandon nuclear reactors.”
Kiyoaki Kawabata, 59, who heads a local self-governing body in the Kagoshima Prefecture city of Satsumasendai, was angry that Kyushu Electric had moved ahead with fuel loading without holding a briefing session for local residents.
“Even though residents have been seeking an explanation, they ignored us. We cannot forgive them for that,” he said. Hiroshi Sugihara, a 67-year-old part-time lecturer at Kagoshima University, commented, “They should stop work and abandon their (reactor) restart plans.”
Seven people from Minamata, Kagoshima Prefecture, about 45 kilometers from the Sendai nuclear station, joined the rally. Takafumi Nagano, the 60-year-old head of a group calling for sound nuclear evacuation plans, said, “We must not allow for the beginning of a new nuclear era.” In the 1970s, Nagano lived in what was then Sendai city and joined a campaign opposing construction of the Sendai plant.
Hiroyoshi Yamamoto, who heads a pro-nuclear group in Satsumasendai and the Sendai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said, “Although the local economy remains in bad shape, I hope that, with the fuel loading, the imminent nuclear plant restart will activate the local economy and stabilize business performance.”
Kagoshima Gov. Yuichiro Ito said in a statement, “Because inspections will continue to be carried out before the nuclear plant is put back on line, I would ask Kyushu Electric to continue to place top priority on ensuring safety and take all appropriate measures.”
About 200 people opposed to the Sendai restart gathered in front of Kyushu Electric’s branch office in the Yurakucho district of Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward on the evening of July 7. The rally was organized by the “Metropolitan Coalition Against Nukes.”
Holding banners, some of which said: “Don’t put in nuclear fuel!” and, “Don’t press the start button,” the demonstrators chanted slogans including “People can’t evacuate!” for about 90 minutes. Protester Yoshimitsu Umezawa, a 62-year-old caregiver from the Tokyo city of Machida, said, “We can’t forgive a reactivation which puts priority on the economy and ignores people’s lives.”
Kyushu Electric Power Co. on Tuesday afternoon began loading fuel into the No. 1 reactor at its Sendai power station in preparation for a restart in mid-August, the first under safety standards adopted in response to the Fukushima crisis.
The 890,000-kilowatt unit in the city of Satsumasendai, on the west coast of Kagoshima Prefecture, will also be the first to be brought back on line since 2012.
But local concerns remain about the possibility of damage due to volcanic activity and how people living within 30 km of the two-reactor plant would be evacuated if a disaster hits.
A spokeswoman for Kyushu Electric said the fuel loading is a 24-hour operation and involves inserting into the reactor 157 fuel rod assemblies currently stored in an adjacent fuel pool. The first fuel was loaded early Tuesday afternoon, she said, and the last of the assemblies are expected to be inserted by Friday.
If there are no problems with loading the fuel and starting up the reactor, further safety checks of the electricity grid will be conducted. If given the all-clear, Kyushu Electric will begin selling nuclear-generated electricity by mid-September.
The Sendai No. 1 reactor passed the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s safety standards last September, making it the first reactor since the March 11, 2011, quake and tsunami and three meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 plant to be cleared for restart under the new rules.
With the exception of Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Oi No. 3 and No. 4 reactors in Fukui Prefecture, which were online from July 2012 to September 2013, all of Japan’s commercial reactors have been offline since the disaster.
The NRA has also cleared the Sendai No. 2 reactor, which Kyushu Electric hopes to restart by mid-October. Since the stricter requirements for restarts went into effect in July 2013, operators have applied for safety inspections on 25 reactors at 15 plants nationwide.
The loading of the fuel into the Sendai No. 1 reactor came the same day as the government announced revisions to the basic disaster response plan that, it says, will improve communications and coordination between Tokyo and local entities if a natural and nuclear disaster occur at the same time.
But Ryoko Torihara, a resident of Satsumasendai and a long-term anti-nuclear activist, said that the NRA, Kyushu Electric and local officials are rushing to a restart without a thorough analysis of the risk of volcanic damage and with questions remaining about evacuation plans.
“It’s quite strange the NRA did not have any volcanic experts on its committee when it accepted the word of Kyushu Electric that the possibility of a gigantic volcanic eruption, called a caldera eruption, was extremely small,” she said. In addition, evacuation plans for those within 30 km of the plant are vague. There are questions about how to assist the infirm, or even whether there would be enough bus drivers to help get people out, she said.
Officials at the Sendai nuclear power plant in southwestern Japan say they plan to start loading fuel into one of the reactors next Tuesday.
The Kyushu Electric Power Company reported the plan to the Nuclear Regulation Authority on Friday. Earlier the same day, pre-loading inspections were completed at the Number 1 reactor.
The utility expects it will take 4 days to insert 157 nuclear fuel assemblies into the reactor. Workers will use a crane to transfer the fuel rods one by one from a storage pool in an adjacent building.
Kyushu Electric will then check emergency equipment to inject coolant into the reactor and a device to insert control rods.
Workers will also undergo a drill to rehearse their response to a severe accident.
If all goes as planned, the utility will remove the control rods to activate the reactor in mid-August.
The Sendai plant’s Number 1 and Number 2 reactors became the first to clear safety screenings last year.
The screenings were required under the country’s new, stricter regulations introduced after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.
The Number 1 reactor began undergoing equipment inspections in late March ahead of the Number 2 reactor.
Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s invitation to the world’s top nuclear agency to review the safety of its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility signals the utility’s desire to win international backing to resume operations at the world’s largest atomic power plant.
Kashiwazaki is Tepco’s best bet of returning to nuclear power generation, after the plant was shuttered along with the rest of Japan’s nuclear capacity following the unprecedented meltdowns at the company’s Fukushima No. 1 plant in 2011.
Firing up its reactors would boost Tepco’s profit by as much as ¥32 billion a month, according to Tepco spokesman Tatsuhiro Yamagishi.
“They want a foreign seal of approval,” said Robert Dujarric, a director at the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies of Temple University in Tokyo. “No one trusts what Tepco says. The only way they can convince Japanese residents that this is not risky is to get a foreign institution to certify them being acceptable.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency began its 11-day evaluation on Tuesday and will report its findings to Japan’s watchdog, the Nuclear Regulation Authority, which has the final say on a plant’s safety. A restart would still need local government approval, which presents difficulties as the region’s governor remains a vociferous critic of Tepco.
Tepco expects to spend at least ¥270 billion to bring Kashiwazaki back online, although it says the cost is a secondary consideration. What is needed and what the IAEA brings is the “knowledge, ingenuity, and engineering capabilities to get there,” Takafumi Anegawa, Tepco’s chief nuclear officer, told a news conference at the plant on Tuesday. “Randomly spending money doesn’t assure safety.”
The NRA has visited Kashiwazaki three times since agreeing to check its reactors in 2013, although it has not given a timeline for approval, according to Tepco’s Yamagishi. NRA spokesman Taro Komine declined to comment on Kashiwazaki and the IAEA’s safety study there.
The IAEA was created in 1957 and one of its goals is to promote the safe use of nuclear energy. Tepco, meanwhile, is struggling to convince the Japanese public of improvements in its attitudes to safety amid worker deaths and irradiated water leaks at the ruined Fukushima plant.
“Of course Tepco would like them to come online,” Tom O’Sullivan, founder of Tokyo-based energy consultant Mathyos, said by email. However, “I have normally categorized it as a plant that is extremely unlikely to come online. There is huge local opposition.”
Hirohiko Izumida, three-term governor of Niigata Prefecture where the plant is located, has said restarting Kashiwazaki shouldn’t even be considered until Tepco’s safety record and handling of Fukushima are properly reviewed.
Niigata Prefecture spokesman Kenji Kiuchi declined to comment on the governor’s opinion of the IAEA review.
Restarting Kashiwazaki would boost Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s plan for nuclear energy to account for as much as 22 percent of the country’s total electricity supply by 2030.
Thus far, Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s Sendai reactors are the only ones to pass the NRA’s safety requirements and clear local courts. Kyushu is aiming to restart the two units this year. While the NRA judged two reactors at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Takahama station as safe, legal hurdles have since obstructed any restart.
Tepco is seeking to restore two of the seven reactors at Kashiwazaki, which is located about 220 km northwest of Tokyo on coast of the Sea of Japan. Its only other nuclear plants are Fukushima No. 1, which is being decommissioned, and the nearby Fukushima No. 2 facility, which may be too tainted by its association with the 2011 disaster to ever restart.
In order to ensure Kashizawaki’s safety, Tepco says it has bolstered staff levels, built a 15 meter flood-prevention wall, and built a reservoir to store 20,000 tons of water to cool reactors in case of pump failures.
The IAEA said its primary focus will be assessing the plant’s internal operations. Three months after its review, the agency will send its report to Tepco, the NRA and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
The review will not replace Japan’s regulatory process, said Peter Tarren, the IAEA’s team leader at Kashiwazaki. “Decisions about restarts of the plant are not the authority of the IAEA,” he said.
Although Kansai Electric Power Co. aims to extend the life of the Mihama plant’s No. 3 reactor by 20 years, the operator may be forced to scrap the 39-year-old facility instead.
On Wednesday, Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, warned that if Kepco has not decided on the basic ground motion standards used as a basis for plant safety standards in the event of an earthquake by the end of August, inspections now underway will be cut off. The surveys are part of Kepco’s efforts to restart the unit and extend its operating life.
“If the ground motion standards aren’t set by the end of August, a major decision will have to be made,” Tanaka
The 826-megawatt Mihama No. 3 reactor will turn 40 years old at the end of 2016. Ending safety inspections would likely force Kepco to reconsider whether revenues generated over a span of 20 years would cover the costs of restarting it. That’s of particular concern given the reforms taking place in the electricity sector over the next few years, which are expected to boost competition.
Twenty years is the maximum extension possible for a 40-year-old
Kepco has already announced plans to decommission the Mihama No. 1 and 2 reactors, which have roughly the same combined power output as the No. 3 reactor. To decommission these reactors would cost at least ¥67 billion. It would also take at least two decades, and would produce about 5000 tons of nuclear waste, whose final location for long-term disposal remains unclear.
Officials in Fukui Prefecture, especially in Mihama, are also concerned about the fiscal impact of the plant’s decommissioning. Since the mid-1970s, the town of Mihama, which has a population of only 10,000 people, has received ¥27.5 billion in nuclear-related government subsidies.
In 2013, about one third of the town’s budget was funded from such subsidies. Officials and businesses worry that decommissioning the No. 3 reactor will mean less official funding from Tokyo, and the potential loss of various “voluntary subsidies” Kepco has made over the years to the town.
Kepco officials said they will make every effort to restart the No. 3 plant as soon as possible. But the utility, which suffered a net loss of ¥148.3 billion in fiscal 2014, faces growing criticism from shareholders, including the cities of Osaka and Kobe, over its management of nuclear power plants and future energy plans.
Kepco announced at its June 25 shareholders meeting that it was necessary to build new nuclear plants. That’s despite advancements in renewable energy and a government proposal to reduce the nation’s reliance on nuclear power, which provided about one-third of Japan’s electricity in 2010, to about 20 to 22 percent by 2030.
Japan’s nuclear regulators have come up with a revised plan to provide emergency medical care to residents after accidents at nuclear power plants. The government has until now helped set up hospitals near nuclear plants to treat small numbers of workers exposed to radiation in accidents.
But in the 2011 nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, local medical facilities were unable to adequately treat the many residents thought to have been exposed to radiation. At their meeting in Tokyo on Wednesday, the NRA, presented a draft of revised guidelines for creating a network of medical facilities. The plan proposes that prefectures within 30 kilometers of plants designate 1 to 3 hospitals as base facilities to deal with nuclear disasters.
The hospitals are to have teams of experts treat patients after accidents and go to other prefectures where nuclear accidents occur.
The draft also calls for designating hospitals and other facilities within around 30 kilometers of nuclear plants as “cooperating organizations.” The facilities would check evacuees for exposure to radiation and treat the injured and sick. The NRA is to decide on the revised guidelines after soliciting opinions from the public for 30 days from Thursday.
The top official of a group of nuclear energy experts says the Fukushima Daiichi accident has made it difficult for Japan to properly train enough nuclear specialists.
Hiroshi Uetsuka, the new president of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, told reporters on Wednesday that every research reactor housed at universities and other institutes across Japan is idled.
Uetsuka said the operators of those institutes are unable to meet regulations that were revised following the nuclear accident. He said the budgets and staff for the research reactors have been cut.
The president called the situation very serious because of the challenges that both decommissioning and restarting reactors present.
He said his society will put together proposals to address the problem.
Uetsuka said the cause of the Fukushima Daiichi accident is well understood, but investigations have yet to determine what exactly is going on inside the reactors.
Uetsuka said the society will continue to study the accident. He said its members, along with officials of the Nuclear Regulation Authority and power companies, will discuss how to apply their findings to reactor regulations.
The restart of a nuclear power plant in southwestern Japan may not come until May at the earliest, due to a procedural reason.
In September, 2 reactors at the plant in Satsuma Sendai City in Kagoshima Prefecture became the first in Japan to meet new, tougher government regulations introduced after the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima. Later, the governor of Kagoshima gave consent to Kyushu Electric Power Company to restart them.
The utility still needs approval from the Nuclear Regulation Authority for technical documents. It told the authority on Thursday that preparing them will take 2 or 3 months longer than expected because the authority says many revisions are needed.
One of the documents explains in detail facility designs for the plant’s Number 1 reactor. The company originally planned to submit it in December. It now says it will take until the end of February, due to the need to provide more detailed data and explanations on earthquake resistance.
The utility says it will submit by the end of March a separate document describing designs for facilities that are shared with the Number 2 reactor.
The restart may not come until May or later, possibly the summer, pending the regulator’s approval of the documents and onsite inspections.
All of Japan’s commercial nuclear reactors remain offline.
The Sendai nuclear power plant will become the first of Japan’s 48 commercial reactors to be restarted after they were all shut down since the Fukushima disaster in 2011
Little is reported in the media about the clean up after the Fukushima Power Plant disaster. After three years of cover-ups and misleading information, released to quell public fears, there is still reason to be wary. The danger is still very real.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in 2011 is still impacting lives today. Over 120,000 people from the area are living in a nuclear limbo, according to the guardian. Once close-knit families are now forced to live apart in temporary housing complexes, many of the homes hastily thrown up in an effort to get people out of radiation “hot-spots.”
Japan’s population has been inundated with half-truths and sometimes, outright lies, concerning the progress being made in the clean-up efforts in Fukushima. For the thousands of workers tasked with the laborious details of doing the actual work, just knowing their efforts are inadequate must be mind-numbing.
Fukushima Daiichi’s manager, Akira Ono is the man in charge of the clean up efforts, and he admitted to the Guardian that there is little cause for optimism. No matter what the workers do, there is still a huge problem with contaminated water. Over 400 tons of groundwater flow every day from the hills outside the plant and into the basements where the three stricken reactors are located.
There, the water mixes with the coolant water being pumped in to keep the melted fuel from overheating and causing another nuclear accident. TEPCO says “most of the water” is pumped out into holding tanks, but ever-increasing amounts end up seeping into maintenance trenches, and then into the ocean. This has to be depressing for Ono and the men and women walking into the facility every day.
While Americans have been sitting back and ignoring the ongoing disaster that is Fukushima, other countries have taken notice. Germany and Italy are looking at the viability of continuing to depend on nuclear power, and are opting instead for other more eco-friendly sources. And surprisingly, the news media in other countries is also paying attention to what has been going on at the Fukushima power plant.
Arnold Gunderson, a former high-level nuclear industry executive, was cited in an article written in Al-Jazeera English, entitled “Fukushima: It’s much worse than you think,” in June, 2011. In the story, Gunderson is quoted as saying, the Fukushima disaster was “the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind. Twenty nuclear cores have been exposed at Fukushima.” Gunderson also points out that the site’s many spent-fuel pools give Fukushima 20 times the radiation release potential of Chernobyl.
If people on the North American coast think they are safe from the effects of radiation from the Fukushima disaster, not only are they dreaming, but they are going to be in for a rude awakening. Yes, there were a few stories telling us the radiation levels reaching our west coast were “tiny amounts,” But how many additional infants are going to die, and how many more people, children and adults are going to end up with unexplained cancers before someone wakes up to what is happening?
And the American public needs to wake up right now. We have nuclear disasters just waiting to happen in our own back yard. From the Diable Canyon power plant in California, to the Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownville, Nebraska that was almost inundated with floodwaters in June, 2014, the list is getting longer and longer. The Nuclear Regulatory Committee has been forced to ease up on some regulations or just ignore them when it comes to helping power plants in the U.S. to meet what officials call “unnecessarily conservative” standards. Yes, ignorance is bliss. That is scary, folks,
Oct 31 (Reuters) – The governor of Kagoshima prefecture, home to Kyushu Electric Power Co’s Sendai plant, said restarting the nuclear facility was in its “final stage” in a positive sign for the industry, as the trade minister reiterated support for reviving idled reactors.
All 48 of Japan’s nuclear reactors remain offline more than three years after an earthquake and tsunami set off meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government is pushing to restart reactors that meet new regulatory guidelines.
Kyushu Electric’s two-reactor Sendai plant, located 1,000 km (600 miles) southwest of Tokyo in Satsumasendai, was the first to pass the independent regulator’s safety guidelines last month.
“We are in the final stage on the issue of the Sendai plant’s restart,” said Kagoshima governor Yuichiro Ito during a meeting with newly appointed trade minister Yoichi Miyazawa on Friday.
Japan has said it would defer to local authorities to approve any restart.
The city assembly of Satsumasendai voted in favour of restarting the plant this week and Kagoshima’s prefectural assembly is expected to vote to finalise the restart next Friday, local politicians say.
Only eight lawmakers out of 49 state assemblymen are opposed to restarting the plant.
Ito did not give a timeline for a possible restart of the plant, but any return to operations is seen as unlikely until next year.
Miyazawa, who was appointed to head the powerful trade ministry after the sudden resignation of his predecessor over a political funds scandal, said he planned to tour the nuclear plant and talk to local politicians in Kagoshima next Monday, Nov. 3.
A town in southwest Japan became the first to approve the restart of a nuclear power station on Oct. 28, a step forward in Japan’s fraught process of reviving an industry left idled by the Fukushima nuclear crisis in 2011.
Kagoshima Prefecture’s Satsuma-sendai, a town of 100,000 that hosts the two-reactor Kyushu Electric Power Co. plant, is 1,000 km (600 miles) southwest of Tokyo and has long relied on the Sendai nuclear power plant for government subsidies and jobs.
Nineteen of the city’s 26 assembly members voted in favor of restarting the plant while four members voted against and three abstained, a city assembly member told Reuters.
The restart of Japan’s first reactors to receive clearance to restart under new rules imposed following the Fukushima disaster is unlikely until next year as Kyushu Electric still needs to pass operational safety checks.
All 48 of the country’s nuclear reactors were gradually taken offline after the nuclear disaster, the world’s worst since Chernobyl in 1986.
An earthquake and tsunami struck the Fukushima No. 1 plant, 220 km (130 miles) northeast of Tokyo, sparking triple nuclear meltdowns, forcing more than 160,000 residents to flee from nearby towns and contaminating water, food and air.
Japan has been forced to import expensive fossil fuels to replace atomic power, which previously supplied around 30 percent of the country’s electricity.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government is pushing to restart nuclear reactors, but has said he will defer to local authorities to approve a policy that is still unpopular with large swaths of the public.
The restart divided communities nearest to the plant, pitting the host township that gets direct benefits from siting reactors against other communities that do not reap the benefits but say they will be equally exposed to radioactive releases in the event of a disaster.
In Ichikikushikino, a town less than five km (three miles) from the Sendai plant, more than half the 30,000 residents signed a petition opposing the restart earlier this year.
In the lead-up to the local vote, officials held town halls in neighboring towns to explain the restart, where some residents complained that the public meetings were restrictive and did not address concerns about evacuation plans.
A fire broke out at Kyushu Electric’s other nuclear plant on Oct. 28, according to Japanese media. The fire started in an auxiliary building of the idled nuclear station and was extinguished by plant workers, the agency said. There were no injuries and no release of radioactive materials, it said.
Mount Ioyama
A local council has voted to re-open the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant on the outermost western coast of Japan, despite local opposition and meteorologists’ warnings, following tremors in a nearby volcano.
Nineteen out of 26 members of the city council of Satsumasendai approved the reopening that is scheduled to take place from early 2015. Like all of Japan’s 48 functional reactors, Sendai’s 890 MW generators were mothballed in the months following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Satsumasendai, a town of 100,000 people, relies heavily on state subsidies and jobs, which are dependent on the continuing operation of the plant.
But other towns, located within sight of the plant, do not reap the same benefits, yet say they are being exposed to the same risks. A survey conducted by the local Minami-Nippon Shimbun newspaper earlier this year said that overall, 60 percent of those in the region were in favor of Sendai staying shut. In Ichikikushikino, a 30,000-strong community just 5 kilometers away, more than half of the population signed a petition opposing the restart. Fewer than half of the major businesses in the region reported that they backed a reopening, despite potential economic benefits.
Regional governor Yuichiro Ito has waved away the objections, insisting that only the city in which the plant is located is entitled to make the decision.
While most fears have centered around a lack of transparency and inadequate evacuation plans, Sendai is also located near the volcanically active Kirishima mountain range. Mount Ioyama, located just 65 kilometers away from the plant, has been experiencing tremors in recent weeks, prompting the Meteorological Agency to issue a warning. The government’s nuclear agency has dismissed volcanic risks over Sendai’s lifetime as “negligible,” however.
Satsumasendai’s Mayor Hideo Iwakiri welcomed the reopening, but said at the ensuing press conference that it would fall upon the government to ensure a repeat of the accident that damaged Fukushima, an outdated facility subject to loose oversight, is impossible.
September’s decision to initiate the return Japan’s nuclear capacity back online was taken by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who endorses nuclear production in the country, but has delegated the controversial call on reopening to local councils. Sendai was chosen after becoming the first plant to officially fulfill the government’s new stricter safety rules. It may also have been picked due to its geographical remoteness, and distance from the 2011 disaster area.
The primary reason for Abe’s nuclear drive been the expense in replacing the lost energy that constituted 30 percent of the country’s consumption, which the government says cost Japan an extra $35 billion last year. Japanese consumers have seen their energy bills climb by 20 percent since the disaster as a result.
But another concern remains the state of the country’s aging nuclear plants, which will cost $12 billion to upgrade. Meanwhile plans to build modern nuclear reactors – which were supposed to be responsible for half of the country’s nuclear power by 2030, according to previous government energy plans – have predictably been shelved in the wake of the disaster.
Mount Ioyama
nuclear-news 