A nuclear reactor will resume operation Tuesday for the first time in northeastern Japan, an area affected by the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster.
The planned restart of the Onagawa nuclear power plant’s No. 2 unit in Miyagi Prefecture also marks the first time that a boiling water reactor — the same type as the Fukushima Daiichi reactors that suffered fuel meltdowns during the nuclear crisis — was brought online since the 2011 disaster.
The Onagawa reactor, operated by Tohoku Electric Power Co., cleared safety screening in February 2020 under tougher post-Fukushima crisis safety standards and gained local consent to resume operations.
Tohoku Electric Power spent over a decade completing construction work to enhance the plant’s safety, including building a 29-meter-high tide wall and upgrading the reactor building’s earthquake resistance.
During the March 2011 disaster, all three reactors at the Onagawa plant, which straddles the town of Onagawa and the city of Ishinomaki, automatically shut down. The nuclear plant, located closest to the epicenter of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake, was struck by tsunami waves around 13 meters high.
The basement of the building housing the No. 2 unit, which was undergoing a regular inspection at the time, was flooded. Tohoku Electric Power has since decided to decommission the No. 1 unit.
Last month, Tohoku Electric Power loaded 560 fuel assemblies into the No. 2 reactor as part of preparations to restart it.
The utility plans to begin power generation and transmission in early November and commercial operation around December.
While the Japanese government is pushing ahead to restart nuclear reactors in the resource-poor country, concerns over the safety of nuclear power linger among the public.
Over a dozen residents in Ishinomaki filed a lawsuit in 2021 seeking to keep the Onagawa plant’s No. 2 unit offline, citing flaws in an emergency evacuation plan. The Sendai District Court dismissed the claim in May 2023, and the plaintiffs appealed.
Other than the Onagawa No.2 unit, a dozen reactors at six nuclear power stations in central, western and southwestern Japan have resumed operation after meeting the tougher safety standards.
