A reactor at the Takahama nuclear power plant in southern Japan automatically shut down its activity on Monday following the activation of an alert for possible anomalies, according to the companies responsible for these facilities.
Specifically, the reactor, one of the four that this Kansai Electric Power plant has, was deactivated at around 15.20 (local time) due to a drastic decrease in the amount of neutrons, without any other problems in the surrounding areas, according to the Kiodo news agency.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority, which investigates the facts, has confirmed that the cooling function is working normally, although the exact causes of the failure have not been clarified.
The regional government has explained that it could be due to the fall of a control rod or a problem with the neutron detectors, although the company has assured that the latter were examined on Thursday last week.
Monday’s outage is the first at a reactor in Japan since 1988, when another unit at the same plant shut down due to a similar alert, according to Kansai Electric.
Nuclear power remains a key element for Japan, even though it revised its strategy after the Fukushima disaster in 2011. The authorities then decided to pause their commitment to atomic energy, with specific commitments not to build new reactors or replace those that were becoming obsolete.
However, at the end of 2022, the Japanese government agreed to extend the useful life of nuclear reactors beyond the current limit of 60 years, against the backdrop of the global energy crisis. In the last fiscal year, only 13.4 percent of the energy consumed in Japan was Japan’s own.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
