Tokyo Electric Power Co. , or TEPCO, said on March 30 it had notified Japan's trade ministry it was dropping plans for two more nuclear reactors at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, paralyzed last year by a devastating earthquake.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. , or TEPCO, said on March 30 it had notified Japan's trade ministry it was dropping plans for two more nuclear reactors at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, paralyzed last year by a devastating earthquake.
TEPCO said it would scrap this month a 253 megawatt (MW) emergency power facility comprised of diesel generators and gas turbines at the Hitachinaka station north of Tokyo.
In contrast, Tohoku Electric Power Co. retained its plans to build a new 825 MW nuclear reactor near the Fukushima No. 1 station, but said it could give no date for the reactor's commercial operation, earlier set for 2021.
Tohoku officials told a news conference they expected it would be difficult to build and operate a third nuclear plant due to protests from local authorities.
Utilities this week submitted to the trade ministry power capacity plans for the financial year starting on April 1, but declined to detail power supply plans for the summer until they gather estimates of surplus power supply from other utilities and customer demand.
TEPCO, Japan's biggest buyer of liquefied natural gas, has said it would be hard to restart in 2012/13 any reactors shut for maintenance, since they face strong opposition from local communities hosting its sole facility unaffected by the quake, the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant.
The magnitude-9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami caused reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, triggering a radiation crisis and widespread contamination. Tens of thousands of residents within 20 km of the plant have been forced to evacuate, leaving behind their homes and livelihoods.
The disaster has left TEPCO with huge compensation and clean-up costs, a mounting bill for fossil fuels to replace lost nuclear capacity, and the massive burden of decommissioning the devastated reactors, a process expected to take decades.