Japan shuts units at top nuke plant after quake

Tokyo, July 16: Tokyo Electric Power Co has shut down three major generators at the world's biggest nuclear power plant after today's powerful earthquake in Japan caused a brief fire in one of the units, company officials said.

The company, Asia's biggest utility, said there there was no radiation leakage at the facility after a fire hit a transformer at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa No 3 nuclear generation unit. The fire was quickly extinguished, it said.

TEPCO could not say when the three units that had tripped offline after the quake would be restarted, but an official said it had no immediate plans to increase operations at oil- or gas-fired power plants to make up for the lost capacity.

"We have plenty of power supplies to cover needs for this week between Tuesday and Sunday," a company official said. "We'll study the situation closely to decide on our plans beyond next week." Restarting other power units could boost oil, gas or coal consumption by Japan's power industry, which is closely watched by energy traders after maintenance scandals forced a series of nuclear shutdowns that increased use of other fuels.

The magnitude 6.8 quake struck at 10:13 am (0643 IST) on a holiday today in Japan, killing at least four people in the same area as a tremor three years ago that killed 65 people. For more details click The No 3, No 4 and No 7 power generation units at the plant, located near the centre of the quake some 250 km (155 miles) northwest of Tokyo, shut down automatically. The No 3 unit alone has a capacity of 1.1 million kilowatts.

Four more units at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, which the company says is the world's biggest such facility, were not operating as they had been shut for maintenance, TEPCO said.

The outage comes at a time when Japan's nuclear sector, which generates about a third of its power, is already operating at unusually low levels for the peak demand summer period.

Nuclear plants at the country's 10 generators operated at an average 62.4 per cent in June, up from a seven-month low of 61.9 per cent in May, data by the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan showed last week.

But it was 7.5 percentage point lower than in June 2006, while overall power consumption rose to its highest on record for the month.

It was the weakest rate for the month of June since 2003, when the sector was in the grips of a safety scandal that forced top utility TEPCO to shut its entire fleet, causing a spike in oil consumption as backup power plants fired up.

A new batch of safety lapses revealed this year has forced power companies to shut for additional checks this spring, dragging down utilisation rates -- excluding Japan Atomic Power Co -- to their lowest in over two and a half years in May.

Reuters

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