The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear
Power Plant is a large, modern (housing the world's first ABWR)
nuclear power plant on a 4.2 square kilometer site including land in the towns
of Kashiwazaki and Kariwa in the Niigata Prefecture, Japan on the coast of the
Sea of Japan, from where it gets cooling water. The plant is owned and operated
by The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).
It is the largest nuclear
generating station in the world by net electrical power rating. It was
near the epicenter of the strongest earthquake to ever occur at a nuclear
plant, the Mw 6.6 July 2007 Chūetsu offshore earthquake. This shook the
plant beyond design basis and initiated an extended shutdown for inspection,
which indicated that greater earthquake-proofing was needed before operation
could be resumed.
The nuclear power plant was
completely shut down for 21 months following the earthquake. On May 9, 2009,
one unit (Unit 7) was restarted, after seismic upgrades. A second unit was
restarted in August 2009, Unit 6.
Reactors
There are seven units, which are all lined
up along the coast line. Numbering starts at Unit 1 with the south-most unit up
to Unit 4, then there is a large green space in between Unit 4 and 5, then it
continues with Units 6 and 7, the newest of the reactors.
The power installation costs for units at
this site well reflect the general trend in costs of nuclear plants.
Capital costs increased through the 1980s but have become cheaper in modern
times. The last two units were the first Advanced Boiling Water Reactors
(ABWRs) ever built.
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|
KK - 1 |
KK - 2 |
KK - 3 |
KK - 4 |
KK - 5 |
KK - 6 |
KK - 7 |
Reactor Type |
BWR |
BWR |
BWR |
BWR |
BWR |
ABWR |
ABWR |
Net Power (MW) |
1,067 |
1,067 |
1,067 |
1,067 |
1,067 |
1,315 |
1,315 |
Gross Power (MW) |
1,100 |
1,100 |
1,100 |
1,100 |
1,100 |
1,356 |
1,356 |
Installation Costs (1,000 yen/kW) |
330 |
360 |
310 |
310 |
420 |
310 |
280 |
Performance
Such a large plant size has several
economic advantages, one of these advantages is very little effect on net power
production due to refueling outages of individual units. A smooth transition
was seen in the power production history of the plant up through the time the
last two units were built. Unfortunately, since completion the plant has seen
two events that caused the entire plant to be shut down. The last of these two
events is ongoing and data is not available yet, data for the rest of the
plant's history is shown below:
|
UNIT 1 |
UNIT 2 |
UNIT 3 |
UNIT 4 |
UNIT 5 |
UNIT 6 |
UNIT 7 |
TOTAL |
1985 |
4.960 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
4.960 |
1986 |
6.704 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
6.704 |
1987 |
9.195 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
9.195 |
1988 |
6.960 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
6.960 |
1989 |
6.442 |
|
|
|
1.041 |
|
|
7.484 |
1990 |
5.987 |
5.386 |
|
|
7.911 |
|
|
19.284 |
1991 |
9.032 |
6.642 |
|
|
7.093 |
|
|
22.767 |
1992 |
6.958 |
9.047 |
0.053 |
|
6.977 |
|
|
23.035 |
1993 |
6.874 |
7.213 |
6.488 |
0.012 |
9.238 |
|
|
29.825 |
1994 |
7.020 |
7.291 |
7.264 |
6.040 |
7.155 |
|
|
34.771 |
1995 |
9.235 |
7.697 |
9.254 |
6.182 |
7.508 |
|
|
39.877 |
1996 |
6.814 |
8.811 |
7.922 |
8.068 |
7.906 |
5.663 |
0.058 |
45.242 |
1997 |
7.900 |
7.284 |
8.016 |
7.517 |
8.919 |
10.161 |
8.128 |
57.926 |
1998 |
6.176 |
8.142 |
6.748 |
9.259 |
7.353 |
10.702 |
9.716 |
58.095 |
1999 |
9.199 |
8.209 |
9.028 |
8.142 |
7.772 |
9.710 |
8.445 |
60.505 |
2000 |
7.715 |
8.140 |
7.945 |
6.919 |
7.043 |
9.412 |
11.240 |
58.413 |
2001 |
7.071 |
7.595 |
6.986 |
5.591 |
9.199 |
9.270 |
10.078 |
55.790 |
2002 |
5.906 |
5.866 |
5.576 |
9.240 |
8.191 |
11.504 |
7.990 |
54.273 |
2003 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
4.186 |
1.503 |
8.401 |
5.778 |
19.869 |
2004 |
6.497 |
4.660 |
6.550 |
5.624 |
6.135 |
8.635 |
10.805 |
48.906 |
2005 |
3.126 |
6.388 |
6.062 |
7.192 |
6.853 |
11.126 |
7.977 |
48.725 |
2006 |
6.299 |
9.331 |
7.331 |
2.817 |
8.400 |
8.447 |
8.166 |
50.792 |
2007 |
3.165 |
1.830 |
5.054 |
5.061 |
0.0 |
3.758 |
6.358 |
25.226 |
2008 |
0.0 |
0.0 |
0.0 |
0.0 |
0.0 |
0.0 |
0.0 |
0.0 |
2002 Scandal shut downs
The reactors at the KK plant were shut down
one by one after the discovery of deliberate falsification of data. The first
one was taken offline September 9, 2002 and the last one was taken offline
January 27, 2003. The newest units, the more inherently safe ABWRs, were taken
back online the quickest and suffered the smallest effect. Units 1, 2, and 3 on
the other hand, generated no electricity whatsoever during the entire fiscal
year of 2003.
Fuel
All reactors continue to use low-enriched
Uranium as the nuclear fuel, however, there have been plans drafted by Tepco to
use MOX fuel in some of the reactors by the permission of the Japanese Atomic
Energy Commission (JAEC). A public referendum in the Kariwa village in 2001
voted 53% against use of the new fuel. After the 2002 Tepco data fabrication
scandals, the president at the time, Nobuya Minami, announced that plans to use
the MOX fuel at the KK plant would be suspended indefinitely.