26 Mar (NucNet): Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), operator of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, has shut down its last commercially operational reactor unit for planned maintenance, leaving only one of the country’s 54 commercial nuclear reactors online.
Tepco said unit 6 at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant was shut down at 01:46 today (16:46 GMT on Sunday). The reactor is a 1,315-megawat boiling water reactor.
The one remaining commercially operational reactor, Hokkaido Electric’s 866-megawatt boiling water reactor Tomari-3, is scheduled to go offline for maintenance on 5 May 2012.
The Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JAIF) said stress tests ordered after the March 2011 Fukushima-Daiichi accident will need to be carried out before any of the 53 offline reactors can be restarted.
JAIF said last month that the government has received initial stress test results from 16 reactors, but has not made a final decision on restarting them.
