11 Japanese nuclear reactors to restart by 2028

The 796MW Onagawa 2 nuclear reactor aims to go online in October 2019.

Eleven nuclear reactors in Japan are expected to go online by 2028 and make up about 10% of the country’s total power generation by that year, according to a report by Fitch Solutions.

The reactors will include 796MW Onagawa 2 which reportedly is in its final stages of safety review and is aiming to come online in October 2019, the Mihama 3 with a total capacity of 780MW which is slated to come online in March 2020 and the 1,067MW Higashidori 1 in 2023 as it aims to finish its upgrades by 2022.

Fitch Solutions noted that the Ohi 3 and 4 nuclear reactors which have a total capacity of 2,254MW restarted its operations in 2018. However, the reactors have reportedly faced a number of injunctions.

“The Japanese government remains firmly committed to increasing Japan's nuclear power share in the power mix from the 5% we estimate for 2018 to 20-22% of total power generation by 2030,” Fitch Solutions said. “We expect substantial hurdles to restarting a number of nuclear reactors, including popular opposition, legal challenges, seismic fault concerns and expensive safety upgrade requirements, to curb the amount of nuclear reactors that come back online over the coming decade.”

For instance, Fitch Solutions noted the uncertainty on when Shika 2 will restart its operations following local opposition as the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) upheld its 2016 opinion that the plant is sitting atop an active geological fault. Similarly, the NRA rejected Hokkaido Electric Power’s assertion that no active fault exists in the compound of its Tomari 1 and 2 plants in December 2017.