THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
June 14, 2024 at 15:59 JST
A seawall shown to the media near the Onagawa nuclear power plant in Miyagi Prefecture on June 13 was raised to 29 meters tall to block a maximum 23.1-meter-high tsunami. (Yosuke Fukudome)
ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Prefecture--After more than a decade of construction work to secure safety, Tohoku Electric Power Co. showed off the No. 2 reactor at the Onagawa nuclear power plant that it plans to restart in September.
Media representatives were given a look at the reactor and the reinforced plant straddling the town of Onagawa and Ishinomaki city on June 13.
The No. 2 reactor is a boiling-water type, the same as those that melted down at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant following the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
If Tohoku Electric restarts the No. 2 reactor as planned, it would be the first boiling-water type to resume operations in Japan since the disaster.
The earthquake caused the premise of the Onagawa nuclear power plant to sink by 1 meter, and a 13-meter-high tsunami also hit the plant.
The water did not swamp any of the three reactors there, but the underground area was flooded and reactor coolant pumps were broken.
More than 1,000 cracks were found in the No. 2 reactor building.
Tohoku Electric started work on the safety measures in 2013 with the goal to restart the No. 2 reactor.
To meet the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s safety standards, Tohoku Electric increased the size of the seawall at the plant to at least 29 meters tall and 800 meters long. It also had to reinforce the plant to ensure it could withstand major earthquakes.
These measures were completed by the end of May this year.
Tohoku Electric fell eight years behind its initial schedule due to additional safety measures obliged by the NRA.
The total estimated cost of the safety measures, including planned anti-terrorism facilities for the plant, is 710 billion yen ($4.5 billion).
After the anti-terrorism measures are installed, Tohoku Electric plans to load fuel into the reactor, ensure the startup process and other procedures are in proper order, and bring the reactor online in September.
(This article was written by Yoshikazu Nakajima and Yosuke Fukudome.)
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