Japan's TEPCO plans to restart reactor early next week after alarm trouble
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. plans to restart a reactor at a nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, early next week, after it was halted over an alarm incident, a source close to the matter said Thursday, Kyodo reports.
Last month, the utility brought its first nuclear unit back online since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, but the operation of the No. 6 reactor at the seven-unit Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant was suspended after an alarm went off during control rod withdrawal about five hours and 25 minutes later.
The utility believes a setup error triggered the alarm, according to the source. It will submit a revised schedule for launching commercial operations to the Nuclear Regulation Authority, with the start date pushed back from the previously planned Feb. 26.
After the alarm pointed to abnormalities in the monitoring system for the operation of a control rod in the early hours of Jan. 22, TEPCO replaced the parts suspected of having caused the problem, but the situation did not improve.
The utility stopped the reactor the following day and investigated the problem further.
TEPCO, facing massive compensation costs and other expenses related to the 2011 nuclear accident, believes that restarting units at the complex, the world's largest nuclear power station by output when fully operational, will increase revenues and help it compensate those affected by the Fukushima nuclear accident.
In January, TEPCO suspends newly restarted nuclear facility.