Aerial view of a coastal industrial facility with large buildings, cooling towers, and a communication tower near the ocean.

Aerial view of a coastal industrial facility with large buildings, cooling towers, and a communication tower near the ocean.
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear POower Plant located north of Tokyo.

Restarting Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is a delicate affair.

Fifteen years ago, Japan (and the world) lived through one of the worst nuclear disasters ever at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

It was the ‘perfect storm’: a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggered a powerful tsunami that overwhelmed the plant’s defenses.

Lack of power disabled the cooling systems for the reactors, leading to meltdowns in three reactors, hydrogen explosions, and significant releases of radioactive materials into the environment, prompting the evacuation of over 150,000 people.

The disaster led to Japan shutting down all of its 54 reactors, and only now is the world’s largest nuclear power plant being restarted.

TEPCO announcement regarding the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station, highlighting its capacity, safety approvals, and reactor startup plans for Unit 6. But will it? News arose today that Japan was forced to suspend operations at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa mere hours after its restart.

BBC reported:

“An alarm sounded ‘during reactor-start-up procedures’ at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa north-west of Tokyo but the reactor remained ‘stable’, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) spokesperson Takashi Kobayashi said.

Reactor number six restarted on Wednesday a day later than planned due to an alarm malfunction – the first at the plant to be turned on since the 2011 Fukushima disaster”

After the suspension of reactor number six last Thursday (22), spokesperson Kobayashi said it was ‘stable and there is no radioactive impact outside’.

The reactor was due to begin operating commercially next month.

“Kobayashi said Tepco was ‘currently investigating the cause’ of the incident and did not say when operations would resume.

The seventh reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is not expected to be turned back on until 2030, while the other five could be decommissioned.”

Read more from August 2023:

Not Just a Drop in the Ocean: China Bans Sale of Japanese Seafood Over Fukushima Radioactive Water Release Into the Pacific – Tokyo to File Appeal at the World Trade Organization

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