Japan is set to restart, as early as tomorrow Monday, the world’s largest nuclear power plant, after a malfunction of an alarm device led to the suspension of the first restart attempt since the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
According to the Japanese daily Japan Times, this announcement comes after TEPCO resumed a reactor on January 21, before shutting it down the following day following the triggering of an alarm from the monitoring system.
Takeuyuki Inagaki, the director of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station, operated by TEPCO, explained that the alarm device had detected slight variations in the electric current in one of the cables due to a configuration error, noting however that these variations remained within the limits considered safe.
Inagaki added that the company had now adjusted the alarm parameters and that the reactor could be operated safely. He indicated that commercial operation should begin on March 18 or thereafter, after the execution of a further thorough examination.
The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant is regarded as the world’s largest nuclear power facility in terms of potential capacity, although only one of the seven reactors on the site is involved in this restart.
As a reminder, this nuclear installation had been shut down since Japan suspended the use of nuclear energy following the powerful earthquake and the tsunami that caused the meltdown of three reactors at Fukushima in 2011.
