TEPCO to Decommission Fukushima No. 2 N-Power Plant

June 14, 2018

Fukushima- Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. plans to decommission all four reactors at its Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power station, its president, Tomoaki Kobayakawa, said at a meeting with Masao Uchibori, governor of Fukushima Prefecture, home to the plant, on Thursday.

All of the 10 nuclear power reactors in the northeastern Japan prefecture, including the six at TEPCO's meltdown-hit Fukushima No. 1 plant, are now set to be dismantled.

The cost to scrap the Fukushima No. 2 plant, which straddles the towns of Naraha and Tomioka, could balloon, thereby possibly affecting TEPCO's reconstruction program involving assistance from the Japanese government, informed sources said.

The decommissioning of the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 plants will leave TEPCO with only one nuclear power station--the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture, central Japan. The Fukushima No. 1 plant, located between the towns of Okuma and Futaba, suffered a triple meltdown after being hit by the huge tsunami from the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that mainly struck Fukushima and nearby prefectures on March 11, 2011.

"The government highly rates TEPCO's plan to decommission the Fukushima No. 2 plant," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a press conference in Tokyo on Thursday. "We want the firm to continue talks with people concerned on details of the decommissioning plan, in light of contributing to the promotion of Fukushima's reconstruction" after the natural and nuclear disasters, the top government spokesman said.

At Thursday's meeting with Kobayakawa, Uchibori called on TEPCO to make a decision on the decommissioning of the No. 2 plant as soon as possible. Its four reactors remain halted.

Kobayakawa answered that the prolonged unclear situation "is a drag on the recovery" of the prefecture. "We'll start detailed discussions," he added.

After the meeting, TEPCO chief told reporters that he received a strong request again from the Fukushima governor to decommission the plant. "We, as a company, will start concrete discussions to decommission all four reactors," he added.

TEPCO will decide on the decommission schedule and other details in the future.

A person related to TEPCO said that the decommissioning of the Fukushima No. 2 plant "won't have a major impact" on the company's financial health on the assumption of state aid to the power supplier.

TEPCO has already decommissioned all six reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 plant. Meanwhile, TEPCO had been unclear about the fate of the Fukushima No. 2 plant although the Fukushima prefectural government and assembly repeatedly called for its decommissioning.

Uchibori told a news conference on Thursday that he "takes seriously" Kobayakawa's announcement of the plan to abolish the Fukushima No. 2 plant, adding, "It will be an important start for the decommissioning."

As much as 8 trillion yen is believed to be necessary to dismantle the Fukushima No. 1 plant, where a huge amount of radiation-contaminated water has been accumulated.

The cost to scrap the Fukushima No. 2 plant could swell because part of the facility was damaged by the March 2011 tsunami, informed sources said, noting that there is a possibility of TEPCO being forced to review its reconstruction program.

In Tokyo on Thursday, industry minister Hiroshige Seko told reporters that he appreciates the decision to scrap the Fukushima No. 2 plant, which was made by TEPCO's top management on its own responsibility. But he added the decision will not lead to any major change in the country's nuclear policy.

The four reactors at the Fukushima No. 2 plant, which sits 12 kilometers south of the Fukushima No. 1 plant, entered into service between 1982 and 1987, with each of them having an output capacity of 1.1 million kilowatts.

Hit by the tsunami, three of the four reactors lost their cooling functions temporarily. But they escaped sustaining major damage to their cores because external power sources remained operative, unlike at the No. 1 plant. Jiji Press