(Update) Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Plant Restarts Commercial Operations after 14 Yrs

(In the second paragraph, the company name has been corrected.) Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Plant Restarts Commercial Operations after 14 Yrs Tokyo, April 16 (Jiji Press)–The No. 6 reactor at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture, central Japan, on Thursday restarted commercial operations after a hiatus of about 14 years. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. switched the reactor into commercial mode at 4 p.m. after confirming earlier in the day that there were no abnormalities with the reactor, generator or turbine. An official from the Nuclear Regulation Authority handed the certification of the final check to the plant’s chief, Takeyuki Inagaki. This marked the first time a TEPCO reactor has resumed normal service since the March 2011 triple meltdown at the company’s tsunami-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in northeastern Japan. The resumption of commercial operations was initially scheduled for late February but was delayed by about 50 days following two postponements due to technical issues. TEPCO plans to operate the No. 6 reactor for a year until its next regular inspection in April 2027. The restart of commercial operations is “just the start, not the goal,” Inagaki told reporters. “We’ll operate the plant by putting safety first, never forgetting the remorse and lessons from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant accident.” The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant’s seven reactors, all of which are the same boiling-water type as those at the crippled Fukushima plant, had gone offline by March 2012. The No. 6 unit passed the NRA’s safety screenings in 2017, but TEPCO was banned from operating the reactor after flaws in its antiterrorism measures were discovered. After the ban was lifted, the company completed the process of gaining the consent of local communities last December. The reactor was then set to be brought back online on Jan. 20, but due to a malfunction found during a control rod withdrawal test, the restart was delayed to the following day. Soon after the restart, the reactor was halted due to another problem. The reactor was restarted again on Feb. 9 and began generating and transmitting electricity to the Tokyo metropolitan area for the first time in 14 years on Feb. 16. At the time, it was scheduled to start commercial operations on March 18. However, an alarm indicating a minor electricity leak went off in March, prompting TEPCO to suspend power generation and transmission for eight days. This resulted in the further postponement of the resumption of commercial operations. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]