Unit 1 at Japan’s Sendai NPP in Kagoshima Prefecture resumed commercial operation on 7 January after a planned two-month maintenance and refuelling outage, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (Jaif) said on 10 January.
The 846MWe pressurised water reactor, owned and operated by Kyushu Electric Power Company, was the first unit in Japan to be taken offline for maintenance and refuelling after it was restarted following the March 2011 Fukushima-Daiichi accident.
The outage, which began on 6 October 2016, was extended to provide for a safety review requested by prefecture governor Satoshi Mitazono, whi had campaigned for election on an anti-nuclear power platform. As governor, he then asked Kyushu to close the plant but later compromised by accepting a deal in which additional inspections would be made during re-fuelling outages. Inspection of unit 2 began on 16 December 2016, and the unit will be shut down until the latter half of February.
Currently, of Japan’s 42 commercially operable reactors, only Sendai-1 and 2, and Shikoku Electric Power Company’s 846MWe Ikata-3 are in commercial operation.
