Monthly Report

Tohoku EPCO delays Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant Unit 2 restart to November 2024

July 25, 2024
Onagawa Unit 2
Tohoku EPCO has plans to restart both Units 2 and 3. (Image: Tohoku EPCO)

Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant Unit 2 is now expected to restart around November 2024, two months behind the originally planned September 2024, the power plant’s operator Tohoku Electric Power announced on July 18, 2024.

Safety measures upgrade work on the unit was finished on May 27, 2024, followed by an inspection by the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA). During the inspection, the NRA found that Tohoku EPCO did not do earthquake impact assessments on three temporary buildings and asked the operator to conduct the assessments.

With the buildings, which include two rest areas and a warehouse, failing the assessments, Tohoku EPCO will need to remove those buildings before restarting the reactor. Accounting for the time it will take to do that, the company decided to delay fuel loading from July to September 2024, which, in turn, delayed the expected restart date.

The 825 MW reactor commissioned in 1995 and shut down for maintenance in 2010 and was in the process of being restarted when the 2011 earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, is now expected to restart commercial operations in December 2024. It will be the first reactor in the Tohoku area, which was the hardest hit during the disaster, to return into service since the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Tohoku EPCO has plans to restart the 825 MW Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant Unit 3 in the future as well. The power plant’s 500 MW Unit 1 was decommissioned in 2018.

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