Japan TEPCO plans to use more than 1,500 underground cooling pipes to freeze the soil to the west of the site in an attempt to slow or stop groundwater from entering the site and mixing with contaminated water in the basements of the damaged reactor buildings. The buildup of large volumes of this contaminated water has been an ongoing headache for TEPCO as it attempts to remediate residual radioactivity at the site.
Sendai 1 Restart Slated for July
April 30, 2015—Kyushu Electric Power Co. is planning to load fuel assemblies into its Sendai 1 nuclear power plant in June, to prepare for the facility to start up in July and begin full commercial operations in August, according to the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum.
Last week a local district court rejected a suit to prevent the plant’s resuming operations on safety grounds. If the startup takes place as planned, it will be the first since all of the country’s 48 operable nuclear power plants were idled in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident.
Sendai 1 and 2 are both 846-megawatt pressurized water reactors that began operating in the mid-1980s.
Japan Government Plans 22 Percent Nuclear by 2030
April 30, 2015—The Japanese government is discussing a draft electricity generation plan that includes nuclear as a baseload source that by 2030 would provide up to 22 percent of the country’s electricity supply.
Assuming no new reactors are built by 2030, reaching that level would require some reactors to obtain approval for extended lifetime operations, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s director-general for energy said.
The plan, which seeks to reduce CO2 emissions by almost 22 percent from the 2013 level by 2030, also envisages up to 24 percent of Japan’s electricity mix coming from renewables, 27 percent from imports of liquefied natural gas and 26 percent from coal.