Japan Utility to Shut Down All Nuke Plants

Japan Utility to Shut Down All Nuke Plants

Aug 13 - Associated Press/AP Online

TOKYO - A Japanese utility said Friday it will temporarily shut down all of its nuclear power facilities to conduct safety checks, following a deadly accident this week at one of its plants.

Kansai Electric Power Co., Japan's second-largest utility, reached its decision a day after being ordered by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency to review inspection records of cooling pipes and check for signs of erosion at its nuclear power plants. Six other Japanese utility companies were given similar orders.

Kansai Electric officials are drawing up specifics for the plan, company spokesman Hiroshi Kinami said. The utility runs a total 11 nuclear power facilities, all in western Japan.

The shutdown will not affect Kansai Electric's power supply because the utility will restart two idle thermal power units to compensate for lost capacity, company spokesman Akira Maruta said. The plants will be shut down at separate times, not all at once.

Electricity supply from nuclear reactors accounted for 65 percent of Kansai Electric's total electricity output last year. Thermal power and hydroelectric power supplied the remaining 35 percent.

The shutdown will not affect Kansai Electric's power supply because the utility will restart two idle thermal power units to compensate for lost capacity, company spokesman Akira Maruta said.

Government investigators launched a probe Friday at the plant in Mihama, 200 miles west of Tokyo, where four people were killed and seven injured when a corroded pipe exploded Monday, spewing boiling water and superheated steam on the workers.

Investigators were collecting safety records and other documents and questioning executives over Monday's accident, said Toshiyuki Kadono, a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

There was no radiation leak in Monday's accident. But it has added to concerns about safety at Japan's nuclear plants, which account for 35 percent of this resource-poor country's energy supply. It also has pressured the government to reconsider plans to build 11 reactors by 2010.

Kansai Electric acknowledged Tuesday that the cooling pipe that caused the accident had not been thoroughly checked, despite a warning from inspectors last year that it posed a danger. A new inspection had been scheduled to take place on Saturday.

Government officials have said they failed to discover Kansai Electric's lax safety measures in a 2000 company report that included cooling pipe inspection plans at the Mihama plant. In the report, Kansai Electric said it routinely checked the extent of pipe erosion and found no abnormality.

Submission of inspection records became compulsory only after October 2003, when the Tokyo Electric Power Co. was criticized for a series of falsifications and cover-ups at its plants.

Japan's nuclear program has been in limbo following the recent safety cover-ups at power plants and a 1999 accident at a reprocessing plant outside Tokyo in which two workers were killed and hundreds of people exposed to radioactivity.

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