TEPCO's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Reactor Back Online

Tokyo, Feb. 9 (Jiji Press)--Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. said Monday it restarted the No. 6 reactor at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture the same day after a series of control rod-related problems, aiming to bring it back into commercial operation on March 18.

If things go smoothly, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa unit will be the first TEPCO reactor to operate commercially since the 2011 triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

The reactor reached criticality at 3:20 p.m., TEPCO said. The operator will then gradually raise the reactor's inner pressure so it can begin producing and transmitting electricity on Feb. 16. Thereafter, the running-in operation will be suspended on Feb. 20 or later for facility inspections. The company expects the Nuclear Regulation Authority to give the nod to the reactor's commercial operation in the wake of a final check slated for March 18.

TEPCO was initially scheduled to turn on the reactor on Jan. 20 for the first time in 13 years and 10 months, but it pushed back the restart by one day due to a problem detected in an advance control rod withdrawal test. The reactor went back online on Jan. 21 night and was put into a cold shutdown in the small hours of the following day after an alarm sounded during work to pull out control rods to initiate the fission process.

The company said it had identified an alarm setup problem in the system to move control rods and fixed it.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]