Tokyo (Platts)--20Apr2012/550 am EDT/950 GMT

Japan's total installed nuclear generation capacity fell to 46.15 GW over 50 nuclear reactors in the country at midnight (1500 GMT) local time Friday as Tokyo Electric Power Company officially scrapped four reactors at the disaster-hit Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, Platts calculations showed.

Tepco's scrapping of the No. 1 460 MW as well as the Nos. 2, 3, 4 reactors at the Fukushima-1 power plant in the northeast, each with a capacity of 784 MW, follows the formal filing of a request under the Electricity Enterprises Law on March 30.

As a result, Japan's installed nuclear power generation capacity now represents 20% of the country's total installed power generation capacity of 225.667 GW. Previously, Japan had total installed nuclear capacity of 48.96 GW over 54 reactors, represented 21% of the the country's previous total installed power generation capacity of 228.479 GW.

With the scrapping of the four reactors, Tepco has the No. 5 784 MW reactor and the No. 6 1.1 GW reactor at the Fukushima-1 power plant, and four nuclear reactors with a capacity of 1.1 GW each at its Fukushima-2 nuclear power plant.

Tepco also has five reactors with a capacity of 1.1 GW each at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in the northwest, where it also has two more reactors with a capacity of 1.356 GW there.

Tepco lost all of its nuclear output on March 26 when it shut its remaining 1.356 GW No. 6 nuclear reactor at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant for scheduled maintenance that day.

Meanwhile, Japan is set to lose total nuclear output on May 5 -- if there are no restarts of nuclear reactors in the country by then -- as Hokkaido Electric plans to start scheduled maintenance at its No. 3 912 MW nuclear reactor at the Tomari power plant.

If there are no nuclear reactor restarts by early May, it would be the first time that Japanese nuclear power production -- which commenced in 1966 -- has fallen to zero.

--Takeo Kumagai, takeo_kumagai@platts.com

Creative Commons License

To subscribe or visit go to:  http://www.platts.com