Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) resumed commercial operations of a reactor at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant on Thursday afternoon, marking the first commercial restart by the company since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The No. 6 reactor at the plant in Niigata Prefecture entered full commercial operation at 4 p.m., about 14 years after it was last in service. The restart of commercial operations,?initially scheduled for late February, comes roughly 50 days later following a series of technical issues after the reactor was brought back online in January.

Tepco said it completed a final pre-operation inspection earlier in the day, confirming there were no abnormalities in the reactor, generator or turbine while operating at full capacity. The company then issued a certificate confirming the completion of pre-use checks to the plant＊s general manager, Takeyuki Inagaki.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility, which uses the same boiling water reactor design as the Fukushima No. 1 plant, had all seven of its units shut down by March 2012 in the aftermath of the nuclear crisis. The No. 6 reactor cleared safety screening by nuclear regulation authorities in 2017, but remained effectively suspended for years due to deficiencies in antiterrorism measures. Local consent procedures were completed in December last year.

The reactor had initially been slated to restart on Jan. 20, but the schedule was pushed back by a day due to a problem during control rod withdrawal tests. Although the reactor was started on Jan. 21, operations were halted shortly afterward due to another malfunction.

It was restarted again on Feb. 9, and power transmission to the Tokyo metropolitan area resumed on Feb. 16 for the first time in about 14 years.

However, operations were suspended for eight days in March after an alarm indicated a minor electrical leak from the generator, delaying the start of full commercial operations once more.

Translated by The Japan Times