The world's largest nuclear power plant will try to start for the second time

At the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa NPP, they will try to start the power unit on the second attempt. The first one ended with a failure in the electrical system of the equipment controlling the rods. They are trying to start the nuclear power plant after almost 14 years of downtime — after the Fukushima disaster.

"Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) announced a new restart of the sixth reactor at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture on Monday," the Japan Times reports.

For the first time in 13 years and 10 months, Tepco restarted the reactor on January 21, but stopped it a few hours after the alarm, about five and a half hours after activation, because there was a failure in the electrical system of the equipment driving the control rods. The problem persisted even after the replacement of equipment components, the newspaper notes.

The NPP operator explained that the failure was caused by an error in the alarm settings.

"The investigation did not reveal anomalies in the equipment, but revealed rare cases of delayed flow of electric current in one of the three cables that were identified as anomalies, and the alarm went off. The company has changed the alarm settings and confirmed the normal current in all control rods," the NPP operator said.

It is planned to postpone the start of commercial operation of the reactor for about three weeks — until March 18.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa NPP consists of seven power units and is the most powerful in the world — almost 8 GW.

"We cannot exclude the possibility of additional minor problems," said the head of the nuclear power plant, Takeyuki Inagaki.

The station has the same reactors as at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, where the disaster occurred in 2011. In 2012, all seven reactors were shut down. However, after the energy crisis in 2022, the Japanese authorities have changed their mind about nuclear power and are trying to restart the nuclear power plants that were shut down last decade.