Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) on Monday began sending electricity from its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture to the Tokyo metropolitan area for the first time in about 14 years.
The No. 6 reactor at the plant, which was restarted earlier this year, began generating and transmitting power at 10 p.m.
Tepco plans to increase the reactor¡¯s output level to 50% before temporarily halting it on Friday or later to inspect the turbine equipment. The reactor is expected to be restarted again in early March and undergo a final inspection on March 18 before resuming commercial operation, pending approval by the Nuclear Regulation Authority.
The 1.35-million-kilowatt reactor was initially scheduled to restart on Jan. 20, but a problem detected in an advance control rod withdrawal test caused the restart to be delayed by one day. However, the reactor was soon halted after an alarm linked to a device to move control rods sounded.
The plant operator restarted the reactor again on Feb. 9, after fixing a problem in the setting of the alarm.
The reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant are the same boiling-water type as those at Tepco¡¯s tsunami-crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. They were shut down by March 2012.
The No. 6 reactor is the first Tepco reactor of this type to be restarted since the March 2011 meltdown accident at the Fukushima plant.
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