Japan earthquake casts cloud over push to restart nuclear plants

Hokuriku Electric Power Co

05/01/2024 02:39

(Repeats earlier story with no change to text)
       TOKYO, Jan 4 (Reuters) - The powerful earthquake that
hit Japan's western coast on New Year's Day has underscored the
country's exposure to natural disasters, casting fresh doubt
over a push to bring its nuclear capacity back online.
    Nuclear power plants dot the coast of mountainous Japan,
which is prone to earthquakes and tsunamis due to its location
on the seismically active "Ring of Fire" around the Pacific
Ocean.
    Monday's magnitude 7.6 earthquake, which has killed more
than 80 people in the Hokuriku region, destroyed infrastructure
and left homes without power, struck days after regulators
lifted an operational ban on Tokyo Electric's  9501.T 
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant.
    Tepco hopes to gain local permission to restart the plant,
which is around 120 kilometres from the quake's epicentre and
has been offline since 2012. The utility was banned in 2021 from
operating the plant due to safety breaches including a failure
to protect nuclear materials.
    "The Japanese public is still generally less positive toward
nuclear power now than they were before the Fukushima disaster,"
analysts at Rystad Energy wrote in a client note. 
    "As a result, public sentiment – and potentially government
policy – is likely to be sensitive to any new power-plant
disruptions caused by the most recent quake or any future ones."
    Japan had planned to phase out nuclear power after the March
2011 tsunami and Fukushima meltdown, but rising energy prices
and repeated power crunches have prompted a shift towards
restarting idled capacity and developing next-generation
reactors.
    After the Jan. 1 quake Tepco reported water had spilled from
nuclear fuel pools at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant - the world's
largest - but said radiation levels were normal. 
    "Citizens had felt that Tepco could probably be able to
restart reactors by the end of 2024, but this earthquake seems
to have reignited a sense of fear," said Yukihiko Hoshino, a
Kashiwazaki city assembly member opposing the plant restart.
    Monday's tsunami warning reminded him of the Fukushima
disaster, he said. 
    Tepco shares fell as much as 8% on Thursday, the first
trading day since the earthquake, before closing up 2.2%. 
    Hokuriku Electric  9505.T , whose idled Shika plant is
located around 65 kilometres from the earthquake's epicentre,
slid as much as 8% before paring losses to end down 2.2%. 
    The company, which reported water spill-over from spent
nuclear fuel pools and oil leaks at the plant after the quake,
hopes to restart the No.2 reactor there sometime after April
2026, it said in October.
    "Today's heavy selling was mostly due to overall market
sentiment and initial panic selling," said Tatsunori Kawai,
chief strategist at Au Kabu.com Securities. 
    "Traders later realised that this heavy selling cannot be
justified," he added. 
    Rystad said it does not immediately see Japan, the world's
second-largest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), tapping
spot markets as it did after an earthquake in March 2022.
    While prolonged power plant outages, like in 2022, could
trigger purchases of the super-chilled fuel, spot power prices
indicated business as usual, Rystad said. 

 (Reporting by Kantaro Komiya, Sudarshan Varadhan, Mariko
Katsumura and Sam Nussey; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
 ((sam.nussey@tr.com;))