Japan would switch the world’s largest nuclear power plant back on next week, after a glitch with an alarm forced the suspension of its first restart since the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster.
Takeyuki Inagaki, the head of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant run by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), yesterday said that they planned to start up the reactor on Monday.
The announcement came after TEPCO restarted the reactor on Jan. 21, but shut it off the following day after an alarm from the monitoring system sounded.
Photo: Jiji Press / AFP
Due to an error in its configuration, the alarm had picked up slight changes to the electrical current in one cable even though these were still within a range considered safe, Inagaki said.
The firm has now changed the alarm’s settings as the reactor is safe to operate, he added.
The commercial operation would commence on or after March 18, after another comprehensive inspection, he said.
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is the world’s biggest nuclear power plant by potential capacity, although just one reactor of seven would restart.
The facility had been offline since Japan pulled the plug on nuclear power after a colossal earthquake and tsunami sent three reactors at the Fukushima atomic plant into meltdown in 2011.
Japan now wants to revive atomic energy to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and meet growing energy needs from artificial intelligence.
Public opinion in the area around the plant is divided: About 60 percent of residents oppose the restart, while 37 percent support it, a survey conducted by Niigata Prefecture in September last year showed.
Last month, seven groups opposing the restart submitted a petition signed by nearly 40,000 people to TEPCO and Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, saying that the plant sits on an active seismic fault zone and was struck by a strong quake in 2007.
THE TRAGEDY OF PUNCH: Footage of the seven-month-old Japanese macaque has gone viral online after he was rejected by his mother and formed a bond with a soft toy A baby monkey in Japan has captured hearts around the world after videos of him being bullied by other monkeys and rejected by his mother went viral last week. Punch, a Japanese macaque, was born in July last year at Ichikawa City Zoo. He has drawn international attention after zookeepers gave him a stuffed orangutan toy after he was abandoned by his mother. Without maternal guidance to help him integrate, Punch has turned to the toy for comfort. He has been filmed multiple times being dragged and chased by older Japanese macaques inside the enclosure. Early clips showed him wandering alone with
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday said he did not take his security for granted, after he was evacuated from his residence for several hours following a bomb threat sent to a Chinese dance group. Albanese was evacuated from his Canberra residence late on Tuesday following the threat, and returned a few hours later after nothing suspicious was found. The bomb scare was among several e-mails threatening Albanese sent to a representative of Shen Yun, a classical Chinese dance troupe banned in China that is due to perform in Australia this month, a spokesperson for the group said in a statement. The e-mail
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
TENSIONS: The march went ahead without clashes, but arrests were still possible as police investigate suspects behind Nazi salutes, racist slurs and homophobic insults Thousands of people on Saturday marched in southeastern France under heavy security in tribute to a far-right activist whose killing, blamed on the hard left, has put the country on edge. The crowd — many wearing black and some covering their lower faces with masks — marched through the city of Lyon carrying flowers and placards bearing pictures of Quentin Deranque and the words: “justice for Quentin” and “the extreme left kills.” The 23-year-old died from head injuries following clashes between radical left and far-right supporters on the sidelines of a demonstration against a politician from the left-wing France Unbowed
RSS