Japan’s Chugoku Electric Power Company has notified the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) that it plans to restart unit 2 at its Shimane NPP in Matsue in Shimane Prefecture on 7 December. The reactor is scheduled to begin commercial operation in early January 2025.
Shimane 2 will be the second boiling water reactor (BWR) in Japan, after unit 2 at Tohoku Electric Power’s 789 MWe Onagawa NPP in Miyagi Prefecture restarted in October. However, Onagawa 2 was halted again on 4 November due to an issue involving the movement of an auxiliary instrument for a neutron detector, which monitors the reactor’s internal conditions. It has now restarted again.
Both Onagawa 2 and Shimane 2, a 820 MWe BWR that started operations in 1989, are the same type as the reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings’ Fukushima Daiichi NPP, which suffered a triple meltdown following the Great East Japan Earthquake.
The Shimane plant is the only NPP in Japan located in a prefectural capital. Unit 2 was shut down in January 2012 for a routine inspection. Chugoku Electric completed work to implement safety measures for the reactor last month and finished loading nuclear fuel on 3 November.
