Japanese nuclear reactor that restarted 13 years after Fukushima disaster is shut down again

A Japanese nuclear reactor that restarted final week for the primary time in additional than 13 years after it had survived a large 2011 earthquake and tsunami that badly broken the close by Fukushima nuclear plant was shut down once more Monday as a result of an tools drawback, its operator mentioned.

The No. 2 reactor on the Onagawa nuclear power plant on Japan’s northern coast was put again on-line on Oct. 29 and had been anticipated to start out producing energy in early November.

Nevertheless it needed to be shut down once more 5 days after its restart as a result of a glitch that occurred Sunday in a tool associated to neutron knowledge contained in the reactor, plant operator Tohoku Electrical Energy Co. mentioned.

The reactor was working usually and there was no launch of radiation into the setting, Tohoku Electrical mentioned. The utility mentioned it determined to close it all the way down to re-examine tools to deal with residents’ security considerations. No new date for a restart was given.

The reactor is one in all three on the Onagawa plant, which is 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of the Fukushima Daiichi plant the place three reactors melted following a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, releasing giant quantities of radiation.

The Onagawa plant was hit by a 13-meter (42-foot) tsunami triggered by the quake however was capable of preserve its essential cooling methods functioning in all three reactors and obtain their protected shutdowns.

All of Japan’s 54 business nuclear energy crops have been shut down after the Fukushima catastrophe for security checks and upgrades. Onagawa No. 2 was the thirteenth of the 33 nonetheless useable reactors to restart.

Japan’s authorities final yr adopted a plan to maximise use of nuclear vitality and is pushing to speed up reactor restarts to safe a steady vitality provide and meet its pledge to succeed in carbon neutrality by 2050.

Concern concerning the authorities’s revived push for nuclear energy grew after a magnitude 7.5 earthquake hit Japan’s Noto Peninsula on Jan. 1, 2024. killing greater than 400 individuals and damaging greater than 100,000 buildings. It induced minor injury to 2 close by nuclear amenities, and evacuation plans for the area have been discovered to be insufficient.

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