Kashiwazaki Kariwa 1 restarting

Wednesday, 2 June 2010

Kashiwazaki KariwaTokyo Electric Power Company has begun a gradual process to bring the first reactor unit at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant back into operation.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) has begun a gradual process to bring the first reactor unit at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant back into operation.

 

Kashiwazaki Kariwa
Kashiwazaki Kariwa
Along with the seven other reactors at the plant, unit 1 was subject to the powerful Niigata-Chuetsu offshore earthquake of July 2007 and suffered widespread minor damage. Unit 1, a 1067 MWe boiling water reactor, was offline for scheduled maintenance when the earthquake hit.

 

After lengthy inspection and repair Tepco began test operations on 21 May but stopped when a technical issue came to light concerning a pump on a water feed line to the reactor. Having put this right, the process to start up again began on 31 May.

 

First in a series of tests will be a trial at a pressure of 3.5 MPa before another at 7 MPa. Later will be a start up to 20% power and shutdown followed by a gradual increase to power generation. Around that point the reactor could be described as back in commercial operation.

Unit 1 is the third of the power plant's reactors to be brought back into service. Unit 7 resumed commercial operation in May 2009, followed by its identical twin unit 6 in January this year.

 
Researched and written
by World Nuclear News
 

 

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