Work is under way to revise a business rehabilitation plan for Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO).

The regional utility, which caused the 2011 disaster at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, has been allowed to continue existing under the government’s supervision to fulfill its responsibility as the culprit.

The estimated costs for paying damages and decommissioning the reactors at the crippled nuclear plant, however, have only ballooned.

The utility, in the meantime, has continued to fall short of its profit targets that bank on earnings from the nuclear power business.

TEPCO should squarely face that reality and seek to review its plan fundamentally. 

TEPCO was brought to the verge of bankruptcy by the Fukushima nuclear disaster and was subject to de facto nationalization, ostensibly to avoid the turmoil that would otherwise have ensued.

The utility worked out a “comprehensive special business plan” in 2012 under the slogan of “responsibility to Fukushima” and has since been revising the plan about once every four years.

A 2021 edition of the plan said that TEPCO would shoulder 15.9 trillion yen ($110 billion) out of an estimated 21.5 trillion yen that would be required, among other things, to decommission the reactors, pay the damages and clean up affected areas, and would contribute 500 billion yen for that purpose every year.

The plan also said the utility would post a profit of 450 billion yen annually to raise its stock price so the cleanup costs can be recovered by selling off government-owned TEPCO shares.

As it turned out, however, TEPCO has contributed an average of only about 400 billion yen annually over the past five years.

TEPCO’s profits have also continued to fall far short of the target figure, and the company’s stock price continues to lag. 

TEPCO’s expectations failed mainly because the utility’s officials believed optimistically that the company’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture would serve as a pillar to boost profits.

A 2017 plan assumed that reactors of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant would be restarted successively from fiscal 2019. The 2021 plan also assumed they would be brought back online consecutively starting in fiscal 2022.

TEPCO, however, was slapped in 2021 with a de facto ban from the Nuclear Regulation Authority against operating reactors of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant because of defects in its own nuclear protection measures.

The ban was lifted last year, but no prospect is yet in sight for gaining approval of the hosting prefecture, a precondition for restarting reactors of the plant.

There also persists ingrained skepticism about the safety culture of TEPCO, which has repeatedly caused problems over its nuclear power operations.

The estimate for the required cost, in the meantime, has grown to 23.4 trillion yen, partly because standards for reparations have been reviewed.

The cost could grow further because a plan for removing melted nuclear fuel from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 plant reactors, which is part of the decommissioning process, is having a rough going in the initial stage.

The prospect was obviously too optimistic on the whole. The plan should be reviewed critically from the framework up.

Particular attention should be paid to the self-inconsistent nature, and limitations, of the picture whereby TEPCO, the party responsible for the unprecedented nuclear disaster, is hoping to rely on its nuclear power business to rehabilitate itself.

TEPCO is also hoping, in the mid- to long term, to resume construction of its planned Higashidori nuclear power plant in Aomori Prefecture.

Little headway, in the meantime, has been made in TEPCO’s 2019 basic agreement with Chubu Electric Power Co. and nuclear plant manufacturers on collaboration for a nuclear energy project.

TEPCO should stop adhering to the nuclear power business, which is losing its economically competitive edge, and change course more boldly to investing in renewable energy sources.

It is essential for the utility to also focus on its services that combine photovoltaic power, storage batteries and energy-saving equipment, which TEPCO has touted as a new profit source, and to draw on the giant market and customer base that it has in the greater Tokyo area.

TEPCO and the government should consider carefully what they should be doing to fulfill their “responsibility to Fukushima.”

--The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 25