Photo/Illutration The No. 2 reactor building, front left, resumes operations at the Onagawa nuclear power plant in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, on Oct. 29. (Masaaki Kobayashi)

ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Prefecture—Tohoku Electric Power Co. on Nov. 4 said it has shut down the recently restarted No. 2 reactor at the Onagawa nuclear power plant because of unspecified troubles with equipment.

The company said no radiation has leaked to the surrounding environment at the plant located in Onagawa town and Ishinomaki city in Miyagi Prefecture.

Tohoku Electric restarted the No. 2 reactor on Oct. 29 for the first time in 13 years and seven months. It was scheduled to start generating electricity on Nov. 3.

According to the company, equipment was inserted into the reactor that to check if a detector that measures neutrons was normal. But the inserted equipment stopped working in the middle of the process.

The equipment was manually pulled out and recovered.

The company said it shut down the reactor and will postpone power generation until the cause of the problem is determined.

On Oct. 30, the reactor reached criticality, in which a fission chain reaction can continue on its own, and the turbine started up on Nov. 1.

Tohoku Electric had initially planned to start power generation on Nov. 7. But since inspections and other processes went smoothly, the schedule was moved up to Nov. 3.

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