Japan Will Likely Restart World’s Biggest Nuclear Plant This Year, BNEF Says
The world’s biggest nuclear plant is likely to resume generation this year after more than a decade offline, part of a revival of the technology that will help ease Japanese power costs, according to BloombergNEF.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. will start output from the No. 7 unit at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa facility in October under a base-case scenario, BNEF analysts including Mariko O’Neil and Yumi Kim said in the research group’s inaugural report on Japan’s power market, published Monday. It will be the first time Tepco will operate a nuclear reactor under safety rules implemented after the meltdowns at its Fukushima Dai-Ichi facility in 2011, which led Japan to halt all its atomic generation.
Japan has sought to accelerate the restart of reactors to reduce power costs, ensure stable supply and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Tepco last month won approval to load fuel into the reactor in Niigata prefecture and the government has urged local officials to grant the necessary permissions for its restart.
The Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant has seven units with a total capacity of about 8 gigawatts. The restart of No. 7 is part of a series that would see five reactors across the nation back online by 2025, a pace that would still fall short of government targets to have nuclear make up about a fifth of the power mix by 2030, BNEF said.
“The current schedule would require Japan to nearly double its active nuclear capacity between the end of 2025 and 2030," the analysts said. “The shortfall left by delays in the nuclear restart program will largely be met by gas generation."
Monthly average electricity prices are set to fall 11% in 2024 from a year earlier, as demand remains sluggish and the nuclear restarts and new wind and solar generation boost supply, according to the report.
