1st East Japan Reactor Restarted since 2011 Fukushima crisis

Onagawa, Miyagi Pref., Oct. 29 (Jiji Press)–Tohoku Electric Power Co. restarted the No. 2 reactor at its Onagawa nuclear power plant in Miyagi Prefecture on Tuesday, making it the first reactor to come back online in eastern Japan since the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis.

This is also the first restart since the nuclear crisis of a boiling water reactor, the type of reactors crippled at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 plant in Fukushima Prefecture, south of Miyagi, following the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11, 2011.

On Tuesday evening, Tohoku Electric started removing control rods that suppress nuclear fission in the Onagawa No. 2 reactor. The reactor is expected to reach criticality, or a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, in about three hours.

The reactor is slated to resume power generation in early November, but will be temporarily halted for fresh inspections as it has been offline for as long as 13 years. The reactor is expected to resume commercial operations around December.

In the March 2011 disaster, the Onagawa plant’s No. 1 to No. 3 reactors were hit by a tsunami as high as about 13 meters. At the time, the No. 1 and No. 3 units were in operation, while the No. 2 reactor was in the process of being activated.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]