Japan's Onagawa nuclear plant may restart No. 1 unit in July

Tokyo (Platts)--10Apr2006

Japanese utility firm Tohoku Electric may restart the 524 MW No. 1 unit
at its Onagawa nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan as early as July
2006, a company source said Monday.
"We hope to restart the No.1 unit as early as July as we will likely
be submitting our impact assessment report on the automatic shutdown due to
the August 16 earthquake to the government in mid-May," the source said. "It
took us about one and a half months (from submission date) to restart the two
other units at the Onagawa plant," the source added.
Tohoku Electric is currently conducting a regular maintenance its No. 1
unit (524 MW) at the Onagawa plant. The maintenance would end as soon as the
company gets approvals from the Japanese government and local authorities to
restart the unit.
Tohoku Electric had experienced a complete power outage at its Onagawa
nuclear plant in northeastern Japan for nearly half of the previous fiscal
year after all the three units were automatically shut following a powerful
earthquake that rocked northern and central Japan on August 16, 2005.
The utility company last month restarted the Onagawa plant's 825 MW third
unit after receiving safety approvals from the Japanese government and local
authorities. The 825 MW No. 2 unit was restarted in January.
The loss of nuclear production as well as a tightness in LNG supplies
have forced Tohoku Electric to boost generation using coal and low sulfur fuel
oil in the past few months, according to power industry sources.
Between September 2005 and February, Tohoku Electric consumed 970,253 mt
of fuel oil, soaring 128.4% from the same period a year earlier, according to
the data compiled by the Federation of Electric Power Companies. Its fuel oil
procurement for the period stood at 911,344mt, rocketing 136.7% from a year
earlier.
Tohoku Electric's crude consumption for the September 2005 to February
period rose 41.3% to 290,214 mt, while the company's crude procurement stood
at 296,492 mt, up 65.6% from the same period last year, according to the FEPC.
But Tohoku Electric's LNG procurement for the six-month period fell 14.3%
on the year to 1.53 million mt due to a supply scarcity. The company's actual
LNG consumption for the period also fell 16.4% on the year to 1.43 million mt.
Meanwhile, Tohoku Electric would be increasing its procurements of crude
and fuel oil as well as LNG during the current (April-March) fiscal year,
senior company sources said late last month.
The company plans to buy a total of 1.49 million mt of crude and fuel oil
in the current fiscal year which started this month, rising by 9.7% from the
planned 1.36 million mt in the previous fiscal year. It intends to buy 2.80
million mt of LNG in the current fiscal year, up 7.4% from the planned 2.61
million mt in the previous fiscal year.
Tohoku Electric, based in northeastern Japan, has term contracts totaling
2.77 million mt/year to purchase LNG from Malaysia, Qatar, Indonesia, and
Australia. It is also currently in discussion with Indonesia about the
possibility of contracting two LNG cargoes a year from the BP-led Tangguh
project due to start production in end-2008, Platts reported last month.
-- Takeo Kumagai, takeo_kumagai@platts.com

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