TEPCO Stops Kashiwazaki-Kariwa No. 6 Reactor

Tokyo, Jan. 23 (Jiji Press)--Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. said Friday the No. 6 reactor at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture, central Japan, was stopped early Friday morning following a problem.

The reactor was reactivated only on Wednesday after a hiatus of 13 years and 10 months.

The company started preparations Thursday night to stop the reactor, judging it would take time to find out the cause of the problem that led an alarm to go off during a control rod withdrawal operation earlier in the day. It was an alarm indicating a power supply system failure in the device for withdrawing control rods.

TEPCO said the incident had no impact on the environment outside the plant.

According to TEPCO, work to stop the reactor started at 11:56 p.m. Thursday. The reactor was stopped at 12:03 a.m. Friday, and at 1:37 a.m., the company confirmed that the unit had transitioned to a cold shutdown, indicating that it was in a stable state.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]