The restart of the world's largest nuclear power plant has been suspended due to a fault in the control rods
Shut down nuclear reactor (illustrative image), PHOTO: Guillaume Souvant / AFP / Profimedia Images
Restarting the world's largest nuclear power plant was suspended Thursday, just hours after it was restarted for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, ABC News reports.
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO), the operator of the plant, stated that the restart of reactor no. 6 at the plant in northern Japan was suspended due to a fault with the control rods – essential for safely starting and stopping the reactors.
TEPCO said the failure did not cause any safety issues and that the situation was under review. It is not yet known when the restart process will resume.
The restart of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant was closely monitored, as TEPCO also operates the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which was destroyed by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and resource-poor Japan is accelerating its use of nuclear power to cope with a sharp increase in electricity demand.
All seven reactors at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa were shut down a year after the core meltdowns at the Fukushima plant contaminated the surrounding land with radioactive fallout so bad that some areas are still uninhabitable.
The plant is the first to be restarted by TEPCO after the Fukushima disaster
TEPCO is working on cleanup operations at the Fukushima site, estimated to cost 22 trillion yen ($139 billion). The company is also trying to rebuild its reputation after government and independent investigations blamed the Fukushima disaster on TEPCO's poor safety practices and criticized regulators for complicity with the company.
Fourteen other nuclear reactors have been restarted in Japan since 2011, but the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, located about 220 kilometers northwest of Tokyo, is the first TEPCO-operated unit to resume production.
Restarting reactor no. 6 could generate an additional 1.35 million kilowatts of electricity, enough to power more than 1 million households in the Japanese capital region.
The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant's total generating capacity of 8 million kilowatts makes it the largest in the world, although TEPCO plans to restart only two of the seven reactors in the coming years.
