
On October 28, 2024, Chugoku Electric Power finished safety measures-related construction work and started loading fuel into Shimane Nuclear Power Plant’s 820MW Unit 2.
The reactor, which has been offline for approximately 13 years now, is set to be restarted in December 2024 and return to commercial operation in early January 2025. Once it does so, it will be Chugoku EPCOs first nuclear reactor in service since Shimane’s January 2012 shutdown following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.
Unit 2 was commissioned in February 1989 and is the power plant’s only operable reactor. The power plant’s 460MW Unit 1 was commissioned in March 1974 and decommissioned in April 2015. Prior to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Chugoku EPCO was planning to commission Unit 3, a 1,373MW advanced boiling water reactor, in March 2012. The plan was postponed and the unit is currently under construction, with post-Fukushima safety measures being implemented.