The Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) has officially ruled that Unit 2 of the Tsuruga nuclear power plant, located in Japan’s Fukui prefecture, is non-compliant with the country's new nuclear safety standards. The NRA justified its decision saying that the Tsuruga nuclear plant is situated above an active fault line, which is prohibited by Japan's nuclear guidelines. The Tsuruga Unit 2, which started commercial operations in 1987, went offline in May 2011. This disqualification is the first rejection of a reactor under safety standards that were enacted in 2013, following the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
Japan Atomic Power, the operator of the nuclear plant, had hoped it could restart the 1 GW Unit 2, as it is already decommissioning Unit 1 at the power plant in 2015. The NRA had already refused the restart of Tsuruga-2 in August 2024. Two other units (3&4) were announced, but the project is currently frozen.
In 2013, the NRA issued new nuclear safety rules that limited the number of operational nuclear reactors from 54 before the Fukushima accident to 12, and the share of nuclear in the power mix dropping from 25% in 2010 to 1% in 2015. In 2023, the share of nuclear rose its highest level since 2015 to 9%, with 33 GW of nuclear capacity, of which only 11 GW is currently in operation.
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