Tohoku Electric to decommission Onagawa-1 nuclear reactor

Safety upgrades for the reactor were too expensive, it said.

Japanese power utility Tohoku Electric has decided to decommission the first reactor of its Onagawa nuclear power plant in the Miyagi prefecture (Japan), considering that the safety upgrades required to restart it would be too long and too expensive. Indeed, restricted space within the containment vessel would make the installation of safety equipment (power supply equipment, fire extinguishing equipment, and alternative water injection pumps) difficult.

In addition, the reactor has been deemed too small (498 MW net, 524 MW gross) and its remaining operating lifetime would be too short. The reactor was commissioned in June 1984 and has been idle since the Fukushima disaster in March 2011. It becomes the 10th operable Japanese reactor to be declared for decommissioning since 2011.

Tohoku Electric plans to restart the two other reactors at Onagawa (825 MW each) and its 1,100 MW Higashidori-1 reactor in the Aomori prefecture. The group expects to complete safety equipment works at Onagawa-2 and Higashidori-1 by March 2019 and March 2020, respectively. Onagawa-2 could be restarted by March 2021 and Higashidori-1 by March 2022 at the earliest. Tohoku Electric will also submit plans to restart Onagawa-3 to the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA).

This article was originally published by Enerdata.

Photo by Nekosuki600 at the Japanese Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0