Photo/Illutration Tomoaki Kobayakawa, president of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., right, at a news conference in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward on March 30 (Yu Fujinami)

Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. said it will move part of its headquarters’ nuclear power department and hundreds of personnel to Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture, in an attempt to win over the public there.

Residents and politicians in that area have expressed outrage over the numerous mistakes and bunglings uncovered in TEPCO’s attempt to restart the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in the city.

About 300 of the 770 employees at the nuclear department will be transferred to the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, TEPCO said on March 30.

Some have already made the move.

From April, about 70 employees in charge of nuclear safety measures and management of construction projects will work within the premises of the power plant and at offices in the city.

“We will continue to consider (the plan) in detail in order to become a nuclear power operator whom society and people in local communities can put their trust in,” Tomoaki Kobayakawa, president of the company, said at a news conference. “We will make a commitment to establish a track record brick by brick so that the power plant wins acceptance from the local community.”

The company, operator of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, is desperate to restart the nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture to emerge from its financial struggles.

But the many errors the company has made in installing safeguards against terrorist attacks at the plant have delayed the restart plan.

It became known in March 2021 that equipment to detect intrusions at the Kashiwazaki plant had been left broken, and the company waited a long time before installing an adequate alternative measure.

In September 2020, an employee entered the nuclear plant’s central control room using the ID card of a colleague.

The company in September 2021 drafted a report and admitted that top figures at TEPCO had not obtained sufficient information about the nuclear plant.

“There was a communication breakdown between the site and the headquarters,” Kobayakawa said at the news conference.

The company also announced on March 30 that it will spend more than 20 billion yen ($163.5 million) over three years from fiscal 2022 to install a device to detect outside intrusions as a safeguard against terrorist attacks and to renew its access control system.

TEPCO said it will rehire former employees as well as retirees from Chubu Electric Power Co. who have expertise in nuclear power plant operations.

The company said these additions will strengthen the reform in the way of thinking among employees at the power plant.

The utility also said it will hire former police officers and former members of the Self-Defense Forces to increase by 30 the number of people in charge of protecting nuclear material at the plant.

Competition in the industry has heightened through deregulation, and TEPCO has also struggled with the rising costs for fuel needed to run its thermal power plants.

The company is expected to fall in the red for the business year ending in March for the first time in nine years.

TEPCO expects to yield about 50 billion yen in income annually from each reactor restarted at the Kashiwazaki plant.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority has conducted an additional inspection at the plant since October 2021 to ensure that proper and effective measures have been implemented.

The nation’s nuclear watchdog said the inspection will take more than a year to complete.

Even after TEPCO released its recurrence prevention measures regarding safeguards against terrorist attacks in September 2021, problems continued to surface at the Kashiwazaki plant, including poor welding for piping used in fire extinguishing equipment.

It remains unclear if the company can receive approval from local communities to resume operations of the plant.

TEPCO revealed its plan ahead of the Niigata governor’s race scheduled for May.

(This article was written by Junichiro Nagasaki, Yu Fujinami and Yasuo Tomatsu.)

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