After repeated safety issues, Tokyo Electric Power Co. on April 16 began its first commercial operations of a reactor since the 2011 disaster at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.<\/p>\n
TEPCO expects the running of the No. 6 reactor at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture will improve its balance sheet by 100 billion yen ($629 million) annually.<\/p>\n
The Nuclear Regulation Authority gave TEPCO the final go-ahead after the utility conducted a \u201ccomprehensive load performance test\u201d in the morning.<\/p>\n
In the evening, the NRA issued a \u201cpre-service inspection certificate,\u201d allowing the reactor to begin commercial operations.<\/p>\n
The No. 6 reactor will generate close to its rated output of 1.356 gigawatts.<\/p>\n
The reactor had been shut down for 14 years since March 2012.<\/p>\n
TEPCO had planned to resume commercial operations on Feb. 26. But that schedule was postponed twice.<\/p>\n
On Jan. 21, shortly after the No. 6 reactor\u2019s initial restart, a control rod alarm sounded, forcing a full reactor shutdown.<\/p>\n
On Feb. 9, the reactor started up again, but on March 12, an alarm indicating a minor electrical leak halted power generation and transmission. The reactor was taken offline and an investigation was conducted.<\/p>\n
The cause of the alarm was a damaged metal plate connecting the generator to the earth ground. TEPCO replaced the part and resumed power generation and transmission.<\/p>\n
After reaching 100-percent output on March 27, the company conducted inspections during an \u201cadjustment operation\u201d phase to maintain stability.<\/p>\n
TEPCO initially planned to restart the No. 7 reactor at the plant first, but delays in the construction of mandatory anti-terrorism facilities forced the company to switch its policy and prioritize the No. 6 reactor.<\/p>\n
The NRA plans to change the starting point for the installation deadline of the anti-terrorism facilities, which would allow TEPCO to operate the No. 6 reactor until April 2031.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After repeated safety issues, Tokyo Electric Power Co. on April 16 began its first commercial operations of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8768,4,450,28,451,3471,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-587559","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-asahi-shimbun","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-japan","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}