Tokyo, Jan. 22 (Jiji Press)–Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. decided Thursday to halt the No. 6 reactor at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station as a new problem was discovered, after the unit was brought back online only on Wednesday following a hiatus of 13 years and 10 months. The company said it would start work to stop the reactor Thursday night after completing necessary inspections. The removal of control rods from the reactor for its restart was suspended after an alarm sounded during the withdrawal work, and TEPCO chose to stop the reactor because it will take time to investigate what caused the alarm to go off. There was no impact of the incident to the environment outside of the nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture, central Japan. According to the company, an alarm indicating a power supply system failure in the device to move control rods was issued at 12:28 a.m. Thursday. The work to remove control rods was suspended after 52 of the 205 such rods in the No. 6 reactor were taken out. A similar problem occurred on Jan. 14, when TEPCO was preparing to reactivate the No. 6 reactor. At the time, the problem was resolved with the replacement of components. This time, however, the glitch persisted after components were replaced. The latest problem represented the fourth major glitch related to control rods in the No. 6 reactor since last year. In August, one of the 205 rods could not be pulled out, causing a safety inspection in the run-up to the reactivation to be delayed into October. “It’s natural to stop the reactor under the safety-first principle if there is a problem in the equipment,” Takeyuki Inagaki, manager of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa power station, told a press conference held in the village of Kariwa, one of the two municipalities hosting the plant. He stressed that the company will do its best to identify the cause of the problem. The No. 6 reactor went back online Wednesday evening and reached criticality, or a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, around 8:30 p.m. that day. The reactor was initially slated to be restarted Tuesday. But the reactivation was postponed by one day, after an alarm did not go off during a test to remove control rods on Saturday. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
TEPCO to Stop Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Reactor after Problem
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