Japan nuclear reactor in 2011 disaster area stops days after restart

Tohoku Electric Power Co.’s Onagawa Nuclear Power Station

A nuclear reactor in north-eastern Japan was halted Monday for checks, the plant operator said, just days after it became the first to restart in the region since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.

Tohoku Electric Power Co. is facing difficulties in sending in a device to confirm the condition of the No. 2 reactor at the Onagawa plant in Miyagi Prefecture.

The reactor last Tuesday joined a dozen others in the country that have been rebooted after meeting more stringent safety standards imposed in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant crisis, triggered by the quake-tsunami disaster that devastated coastal areas including in Miyagi.

Tohoku Electric Power had planned to restart power generation and transmission on Sunday.

The restart of the Onagawa reactor marked the first time in Japan that a boiling water reactor — the same type as the Fukushima Daiichi reactors that suffered fuel meltdowns — has been brought online since the 2011 disaster.

The Onagawa plant, located closest to the epicenter of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake on March 11, 2011, was struck by tsunami waves around 13 meters high.

The No. 2 reactor cleared safety screening in February 2020 and gained local consent to resume operation. The No. 1 unit will be decommissioned.