Kansai Electric will shut 2 nuclear reactors for security upgrades

Japanese power utility Kansai Electric plans to suspend operations at the Takahama 3 and 4 nuclear reactors (Japan) to complete the security upgrades required under post-Fukushima rules such as building emergency off-site control rooms. Kansai Electric will shut down Takahama 3 from 2 August to 22 December 2020, and Takahama 4 from 7 October 2020 to 7 February 2021. The latter has been shut since mid September 2019 for scheduled maintenance and is expected to restart at the end of January 2020.

In July 2013, the NRA approved new regulations in response to the Fukushima disaster, and required bunkered back-up control centres at nuclear power plants. In November 2015, it mandated reactors' operators to complete these facilities within 5 years after the approval of each plant's engineering and construction work programme. Operators failing to complete back-up centres about a week before the deadline are required to suspend operations at the reactor and to place the unit in cold shutdown. Under the new regulations, Kansai Electric has until August 2020 to complete the back-up control centres for Takahama-3, while Kyushu Electric has until March 2020 and May 2020 for its Sendai-1 and Sendai-2 nuclear reactors. Both utilities have already warned the NRA that construction would be delayed by about one year. Other utilities will also experiment up to 2.5 years of delays. They could then be forced to stop operations again.