KEPCO Considers Building New Nuclear Power Plant

Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) is reportedly considering geologic research for building a new nuclear power plant in the site of Mihama Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui. After the severe accident in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, the government of Japan ruled out the option of building new nuclear power plant in Japan. If KEPCO embarked on constructing new nuclear power plant, it will be challenging Japan’s basic stance with lessons of East Japan Great Earthquake in 2011, which was not relying on nuclear power for national energy. 

KEPCO possesses the biggest number of nuclear power plants among power companies in Japan. Five out of its seven nuclear power plants are older than forty years, the age which was the limit of a nuclear reactor to operate in the standard set after the accident in Fukushima. The government of Japan revised that standard to let nuclear reactors live longer and even an old reactor can continue to generate electric power as long as sixty years.

 

KEPCO once considered replace of reactor #1 of Mihama Nuclear Power Plant in 2010, but the project was halted when the accident in Fukushima occurred in 2011. Mihama plant has three reactors. KEPCO decided in 2015 to decommission reactors #1 and #2. Reactor #3 resumed its operation in 2021 as the first reactor in Japan to resume operation after the accident in Fukushima.

 

It is supposed that KEPCO will resume its geological and topographical research around the Mihama plant. KEPCO is expected to start explaining about its plan to the local communities in Fukui prefecture. However, it would generally take twenty years for a power company to complete research and construction for new nuclear power plant.

 

Power companies in Japan has promoted nuclear power generation as the key resource of energy, cooperating with the government of Japan, namely Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). The accident in Fukushima was a great challenge for them to maintain nuclear power generation, facing public demand of safer energy represented by the renewables.

 

However, they refused to give up nuclear power in which they had heavily invested. They kept on appealing to the public that nuclear power would be necessary to reduce emission of carbon dioxide in Japan. Now they point out requirement of a great amount of electric power for data centers which are necessary to maintain infrastructure for internet technology such as artificial intelligence. There is no discussion, on the other hand, that Japan has achieved a wisdom for nuclear power plant that can prevent any possible disaster.

 

The government of Japan has been taking the stance after the accident in Fukushima that it would not assume new, additional or replacing nuclear power plant. But in the 7th Strategic Energy Plan released in February 2025, METI dropped a description that Japan “will reduce its dependence on nuclear power as much as possible.” It is possible that power companies in Japan, including KEPCO, recognized the plan as the green light for resumption of building new nuclear power plant.

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