The mayor of Kashiwazaki in Japan’s Niigata Prefecture has reportedly indicated his willingness to approve the restart of two reactors (units 6&7) at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa NPP. “We have reached a stage where we can accept a possible request for reactivation,” Masahiro Sakurai said during a meeting with Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) President Tomoaki Kobayakawa.
According to Jiji press, at the meeting, Kobayakawa formally told the mayor of TEPCO’s plans to decide on possible decommissioning of some of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s units 1-5 two years after the restart of units 6&7.
Although Kashiwazaki-Kariwa was unaffected by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami all seven of the plant’s reactors had been offline for two to three years following the earlier 2007 Niigata-Chuetsu earthquake, which caused damage to the site. Work has since been carried out to improve the plant’s earthquake resistance.
TEPCO applied for Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) approval of its design and construction plan for Kashiwazaki-Kariwa units 6&7 (1,356 MWe advanced boiling water reactors) in September 2013. These were the first Japanese boiling water reactors to be considered for restart after all Japan’s reactors were shut down in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
NRA cleared safety screenings for the two units in 2017 but security breaches and problems in completing safety upgrades caused delays. NRA prohibited the transportation or loading of reactor fuel stored at the plant in April 2021 due to insufficient counterterrorism measures, ordering TEPCO to take corrective action. In January 2024, NRA confirmed that those measures had been taken and preparations for restart continued.
In TEPCO’s 2019 plan presented to Kashiwazaki city, the company pledged to take steps, including possible decommissioning of at least one of the plant’s reactors within five years of units 6&7 being restarted. TEPCO hopes that offering to decommission some more reactors earlier than planned will help it win local support for the restart of the units 6&7).
