20 Jun (NucNet): Kansai Electric Power Company (Kepco) has begun preparation work towards the restart of units 3 and 4 at the Ohi nuclear power plant with the earliest start date scheduled for early next month, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JAIF) has said.
According to JAIF, Unit 3 will start power generation on 4 July “at the earliest” and reach full power on 8 July. Unit 4 will start power generation on 20 July and reach full power on 24 July.
JAIF told NucNet that all necessary approvals were in place and no more would be needed. The last approval came earlier this week when Fukui governor Issei Nishikawa met prime minister Yoshihiko Noda in Tokyo and told him he agreed to the restarts because the government had “pledged to increase its efforts to ensure safety”.
JAIF said the plant’s preliminary stress test had been reviewed by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) and the restart approved by the Nuclear Safety Commission, local government and national government.
The planned Ohi restart will be the first in Japan since the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant.
In May the Tomari-3 nuclear unit shut down leaving the nation without any of its 50 commercial nuclear reactors in operation.
Reactors around the country are undergoing safety checks in the wake of the accident that destroyed four units at Fukushima-Daiichi.
Following the Fukushima-Daiichi accident, NISA ordered two-stage stress tests on all Japan’s nuclear reactors.
Preliminary assessments examine a plant’s ability to survive beyond design basis events and are being carried out during planned periodic inspections for nuclear power plants that are ready to start-up.
Secondary “comprehensive” safety assessments are being carried out on all nuclear plants, including those that are subject to the preliminary assessments. NISA said the secondary assessments take into account the stress tests in European countries and reviews by Japan’s Fukushima-Daiichi Investigation and Verification Committee.
Units 2, 3 and 4 at the Ohi plant, in Fukui Prefecture on Japan’s southwest coast, were all in commercial operation at the time of the Fukushima-Daiichi accident. Ohi-1 was in the process of being restarted following a planned periodic inspection.
JAIF’s latest plant status report is online:
www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS02_1339992463P.pdf
