No point whatsoever in restarting Tokai 2

May 26, 2014

Editorial: From economic, safety view, no case for restarting Tokai No. 2 nuke reactor

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/perspectives/news/20140526p2a00m0na007000c.html 

Japan Atomic Power Co. has applied to the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) for a safety inspection of the Tokai No. 2 nuclear plant in Ibaraki Prefecture. Once it gets the agreement of local residents, the firm is looking to restart the plant's single reactor in fiscal 2016 or shortly thereafter.

From both a safety and an economic standpoint, however, putting the Tokai No. 2 plant back on-line is simply not realistic.

The application for safety screenings looks like a desperate, all-out attempt to prolong the life of Japan Atomic Power itself. In that case, however, what the firm needs to do first and foremost is reassess its corporate structure, based on the assumption that it will not be able to restart the Tokai No. 2 plant.

The Tokai No. 2 Power Station in the village of Tokai has been in commercial operation for more than 35 years, and has the oldest reactor of any of the 18 at 11 power plants currently applying for NRA screenings. Japan Atomic Power is set to spend some 78 billion yen on safety improvements at the No. 2 plant, including building a new breakwater to defend it against tsunami. Meanwhile, the NRA inspection will pay especially strong attention to fire prevention measures, including proofing electrical cables against blazes.

New basic nuclear plant safety regulations demand flame retardant cables. The cables at the Tokai No. 2 station, however, are flammable, and replacing them would be an enormous cost in time and money. Japan Atomic power has said it will paint the cables and take other steps to make sure they are just as fire-proof as newer flame-retardant versions.

Is this valid fire prevention? What if the flame-resistant paint deteriorates? This is but one of the serious issues that need addressing, and it's impossible to predict whether the plant will pass the NRA check.

Meanwhile, the 30-kilometer radius zone around the Tokai No. 2 plant has the highest local population of any nuclear station in Japan, at about 980,000 people. Despite this, the municipalities within the 30-kilometer zone have not set evacuation plans in case of an accident at the plant. There have been numerous barriers in drawing up these plans, including finding places for evacuees to go.

Even if Japan Atomic Power overcomes all these problems and gets the restart of the Tokai No. 2 plant approved, the aging reactor has very little time left before it has to be decommissioned. Under the revised nuclear reactor regulation law, reactors have a maximum operating life of 40 years.

Ibaraki Gov. Masaru Hashimoto told the Mainichi Shimbun in a recent interview, "Considering the balance between operational life and running costs, it doesn't seem to me that restarting the reactor would be all that economical." He's exactly right.

The Tokai No. 2 station is not Japan Atomic Power's last ray of hope. The company also has two reactors at its Tsuruga Nuclear Power Station in Fukui Prefecture. However, all three reactors have been off-line since June 2011, and it looks like restarting the Tsuruga reactors will -- due to age and nearby active fault lines -- be quite difficult as well.

Japan Atomic Power is a nuclear energy wholesaler. Even though it is selling zero electricity right now, it still managed to stay in the black for the fiscal year ending March this year -- a feat managed only because of approximately 125 billion yen in "basic charges" paid by its clients, the big five electrical utilities, for equipment maintenance and other costs. Japan Atomic Power more or less has to show it's trying to get the Tokai No. 2 plant back on-line, otherwise the logic for the "basic charge" would evaporate. Meanwhile, the Big Five simply pass on these charges to consumers through their electricity bills.

Even as Japan Atomic Power jumps through hoops to keep its creaking business model intact, the firm is proceeding with the decommissioning of the Tokai Power Station -- home to the oldest commercial reactor in the country. Japan Atomic Power should use that experience to transform itself from a nuclear power supplier into a specialist in reactor decommissioning. The Japan Atomic Power case also calls into question the system of supports from other power companies.

There are some electrical utilities that have announced they're considering decommissioning aging reactors. What system will be created to handle what may become a long string of decommissionings? The government must hammer out a clear plan on this issue.

May 26, 2014(Mainichi Japan)