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Kansai Electric Power Co has announced a plan to add safety features to its nuclear facilities in Fukui Prefecture in the wake of the ongoing disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and said the total cost is likely to be around 200 billion yen.
The company aims to add a base-isolated, quake-absorbing system to 11 facilities in the prefecture, NTV reported. Seismic base isolation is a collection of structural elements which are designed to substantially decouple superstructures from their substructures resting on a shaking ground, thus protecting a building's integrity.
Kansai Electric has also announced plans to build coastal embankments to protect facilities against tsunamis. The Mihama nuclear power plant, the scene of several past accidents, including a steam explosion in 2004 in which four workers were killed, is to be bolstered by a 5.5-meter wall on its seaward side and a 2.5-meter wall facing the inland sea, NTV reported.
The total cost of the project is expected to exceed 200 billion yen and will likely take until 2017.
Meanwhile, the Kainan thermal power station in Wakayama Prefecture, which is currently not operational, is due to be restarted in spring 2012, the utility said.
The company plans to increase its fleet of fuel tankers by one to bring the total to six. The company says this will allow for a 25% increase the amount of fuel it can transport, taking the total to 25,000 kiloliters, NTV reported.
© Japan Today
16 Comments
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some14some
Y200 bil is a petty small amount, they should go ahead. But if the project is going to take six years, the cost will go up by 6-folds (atleast), still worth considering (?)
Elbuda Mexicano
Time for these idiots to CLOSE DOWN these Fukui nuclear power plants ASAP!!
MaboDofuIsSpicy
Those new walls are too short guys. Try 15 meters at least.
nath
How old is this plant anyway? Wouldn't it be a better to make a new plant based on the designs instead of patching up an existing one?
Even if developments are to be done to the existing plants, do they need to be shut down? If so, how long? Are the safety backup plans already considered in the cost estimates? Also, have they made a case study on the impact of the new designs for different disaster scenarios?
As usual, there are a lot of questions that the administrators (or even journalists) fail to include in the reports.
delrennich
Why not just invest 200 billion yen into solar/wind power instead? Every rooftop in Tokyo should have solar panels on it. Forget about pouring more concrete to fix all of our problems.
SquidBert
Maybe because it is not really in the interest of electric power production companies to put electric production in the hands of the consumers?
cleo
What inland sea? The Mihama plant is on a promontory sticking out into Wakasa Bay, on the Japan Sea side. It's got sea on three and a half sides.
Elbuda Mexicano
This Mihama plant is just another FUKSHIMA waiting to happen!!!!! Shut it down now!!
Blair Herron
Mr. Hashimoto's one of his 4 pledges in his manifesto is "less nuke power". This summer, KEPCO required 15% cut, but Hashimoto declined the request. He asked for scientific figures (why 15%), but KEPCO never gave him the figure. According to Masao Takano of Nagoya University, KEPCO area used 31380000kw at peak time (not total) in 2010. KEPCO can generate 38630000kw (4550000kw from nuke energy). Even if all nukes stopped, they can generate at maximum capacity of 34080000kw. If Takano's calculation works, they can save 200 billion yen and use it for something else, like development of new energy resource or something...
nandakandamanda
These 'improvements' to Japan's nuclear power stations should have been built in right at the start. Japan is not just earthquake prone. It seems to be constantly moving, and pretty much at random. Maybe this is why the earthquake page is part of the weather forecast.
See Yahoo: http://typhoon.yahoo.co.jp/weather/jp/earthquake/
Everything seems to happen piecemeal here. Great if the government were strong enough to make a blanket policy, but will that ever happen?
These islands have plenty of wind, wave and thermal power available. I've heard the excuses why so far little has been done.
Potentially Japan could contribute to the world by creating new energy sources and systems.
Disillusioned
200 billion is nothing compared to how much TEPCO is gonna have to shell out over the coming decades. These safety measures should have been taken when the plants were first built and not after one was destroyed by a tsunami that everyone knew was possible. Imagine how different the outcome would have been if Fukushima dai-ichi had a 5m sea wall protecting it.
smithinjapan
'Tis a shame they cut so many corners in the first place.
gonemad
Which parts of the plants will be put on quake-absorbing systems? I can't imagine you can simply retrofit a whole reactor with a quake-aborbing system and much less than 200 billion for adding them to several facilities (all 11 of them are reactors?) seems to be extremely cheap.
wtfjapan
another Y200 billion to add to the taxpayer funded bill. whats stand at now $10,000,000,000,000!?
Serrano
This is not cost-effective power generation.