New shocks in Japan as operating nuclear power unit forced to shut down

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s request May 6 to Chubu Electric to shut all operations at its sole Hamaoka nuclear power plant is causing waves of aftershocks at multiple levels, at the prospect of further worsening power shortages across the country.

Kan’s request, which was the first of its kind and not legally binding, was made in the belief that the Hamaoka nuclear plant may not be sufficiently earthquake- and tsunami-proof and a forecast of an 87% probability that an earthquake of magnitude 8 will likely strike near the plant in the next 30 years.

Chubu Electric decided May 9 to shut its 1.137 GW No. 4 and 1.38 GW No. 5 nuclear reactors and postpone the restart of the 1.1 GW No. 3 reactor at its Hamaoka power plant in central Japan indefinitely. The Hamaoka No. 4 and No. 5 reactors were shut as of May 14.

The utility’s president Akihisa Mizuno said May 9 that “the request from the Prime Minister was extremely grave” and interpreted it as a result of growing public concerns over nuclear power generation amid the ongoing Fukushima-1 nuclear crisis.

Local industry sources see the Hamaoka situation as a watershed because not a single Japanese nuclear reactor has restarted since the devastating March 11 earthquake, even those that have completed scheduled maintenance programs.

Consequences are already apparent nationwide. Heads of local communities and prefectures that host nuclear power plants are expressing doubts over allowing any nuclear reactors currently closed for maintenance to restart in the near future even though the facilities have secured approvals from the government in early May, based on new government safety measures introduced on March 30.

As Japanese nuclear power plants are required to carry out maintenance programs at their reactors every 13 months at a minimum, Japan may lose its nuclear output completely in April 2012, when Tokyo Electric Power Company is scheduled to shut its 1.356 GW No. 6 nuclear reactor at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in the northwest.

That would be the first time in Japan’s history that nuclear power production will go to zero since it started nuclear power generation in 1966. Today, 54 operable nuclear reactors in Japan with a combined capacity of 48.96 GW accounts for around 20% of the country’s total installed power generation capacity.

Nuclear power plant outages typically boost oil and LNG demand in Japan as local power utilities step up thermal power generation.  However, increasing fossil fuel-powered generation and hydropower output may not be enough to cover Japan’s complete outage of nuclear capacity, especially during the summer and winter peak demand seasons, according to industry observers.

Meanwhile, there are mixed views in the Japanese energy industry about the possibility of a complete nuclear capacity outage as early as next year, with some doubting that the central and local governments will allow it to happen.

What is certain, however, is that Fukushima will have to reach at least a cool shutdown before any of the country’s other reactors are allowed to resume operations.

Regardless of the political complexities to be navigated before the post-quake nuclear power roadmap is clear, the country needs to find both short-term and mid-term solutions to balance its energy supply mix while keeping power shortages at bay at a time the economy badly needs a leg up.

Platts