The Japanese power utility Shikoku Electric has decided not to restart the 538 MWe Itaka-2 pressurised water reactor (PWR) in Ikata (Ehime prefecture, Japan). The facility is the ninth operable Japanese nuclear reactor to be slated for decommissioning since the Fukushima Daiichi accident in 2011. The main driver behind the decision is the cost and scale of the modifications required to upgrade the 40-year-old unit to meet the country's revised safety standards. Operating the unit beyond the 40-year limit would have been uneconomical since the upgrade would have cost approximately JPY170bn (US$1.6bn). Ikata-2 was commissioned in March 1988 and taken offline in January 2012 for periodic inspections.
The 846 MWe Ikata-3 PWR was granted approval to restart by the Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) in April 2016, restarted in early August 2016 and ramped up until full power in late August 2016. It was the fifth reactor to be restarted under the tighter safety standards enacted by the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), after Kyushu Electric's Sendai-1 and 2 reactors in the Kagoshima prefecture and Kansai Electric's Takahama-3 and 4 reactors in the Fukui prefecture. However, a Japanese high court ordered the suspension of Ikata-3 operations in December 2017 and the facility shall remain offline until at least September 2018.