Tohoku begins steps for reactor restart
Date: 28-May-03
Country: JAPAN
"We are beginning to take steps to resume normal operations...and if these progress smoothly we expect to be able to restart the reactor as soon as this evening," a company spokesman said.
The 825,000 kilowatt (kW) No 3 nuclear reactor at Tohoku Electric's Onagawa plant in Miyagi Prefecture, northern Japan, shut down automatically this weekwhen a powerful earthquake struck the region.
The plant, near the city of Sendai, 300 km (190 miles) north of Tokyo, is designed to shut down automatically during a quake of a certain strength.
The quake injured more than 100 people and rocked buildings as far away as Tokyo, about 450 km (280 miles) south of its epicentre.
The Meteorological Agency said the quake measured seven on the open-ended Richter scale, about the same strength as a quake that devastated the southern Japan city of Kobe eight years ago.
About 35,000 homes temporarily lost power supplies this weekbut electricity was restored for most within a few hours.
Two other nuclear reactors at the Onagawa plant, which have capacities of 524,000 kW and 825,000 kW, have been closed for maintenance checks.
Tohoku Electric said safety checks had also been completed on two thermal power plants in the vicinity, the Shin Sendai No 1 and No 2 plants.
It has resumed regular maintenance checks on the No 1 plant, which were interrupted by the earthquake.
The No 2 plant was restarted this week, it said in a news release.
A spokesman at Japan's Federation of Electric Power Companies said Tohoku Electric's Onagawa No 3 unit was the only nuclear reactor that closed down due to the quake.
"There have been no reports of (other) impacts," he said.
Tohoku Electric's nuclear power plant was the closest of Japan's nuclear power plants to the centre of the quake, whose focus was 20 km (12 miles) off the coast and 71 km (44 miles) below the surface.
Resource-poor Japan relies on nuclear power for about one-third of its electricity needs.
