Tepco reactors to clear big hurdles

>> TOKYO: Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc (Tepco) is expected to soon see two of its nuclear reactors clear the initial safety hurdle to bring them back online, even as the company struggles to recover from the 2011 Fukushima crisis, sources close to the matter said on Friday.

Tepco, as the utility is known, has been spending years seeking to restart the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast, which is the only nuclear complex operated by the company outside Fukushima prefecture on the Pacific coast.

It filed for safety assessments of the Nos 6 and 7 units in September 2013.

According to the sources, the commissioners of the Nuclear Regulation Authority will start discussions on the issue from next Wednesday, with a view to compiling a draft document that will serve as a certificate that the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa reactors have satisfied new safety requirements introduced after the Fukushima crisis.

The NRA wants to reach a conclusion on the issue before its chairman, Shunichi Tanaka’s, five-year term expires on Sept 18, the sources said. But the move may trigger criticism as Tepco still has a long way to go to scrap the meltdown reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was engulfed by huge quake-triggered tsunami waves in March 2011.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa complex is one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants with a combined output capacity of 8.2 million kilowatts. The Nos 6 and 7 reactors are boiling water reactors — the same type as the ones at the Fukushima Daiichi complex — and the newest among the seven units at the plant.

Tepco, which is facing massive compensation payments to deal with one of the world’s worst nuclear crises, is desperate to resume operation of its idled reactors so it can reduce spending on costly fossil fuel imports for non-nuclear thermal power generation.