Platts - Monday, April 10, 2006 http://www.platts.com ------------ Japan's Onagawa nuclear plant may restart No. 1 unit in July Tokyo (Platts)--10Apr2006 Japanese utility firm Tohoku Electric may restart the 524 MW No. 1 unit at its Onagawa nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan as early as July 2006, a company source said Monday. "We hope to restart the No.1 unit as early as July as we will likely be submitting our impact assessment report on the automatic shutdown due to the August 16 earthquake to the government in mid-May," the source said. "It took us about one and a half months (from submission date) to restart the two other units at the Onagawa plant," the source added. Tohoku Electric is currently conducting a regular maintenance its No. 1 unit (524 MW) at the Onagawa plant. The maintenance would end as soon as the company gets approvals from the Japanese government and local authorities to restart the unit. Tohoku Electric had experienced a complete power outage at its Onagawa nuclear plant in northeastern Japan for nearly half of the previous fiscal year after all the three units were automatically shut following a powerful earthquake that rocked northern and central Japan on August 16, 2005. The utility company last month restarted the Onagawa plant's 825 MW third unit after receiving safety approvals from the Japanese government and local authorities. The 825 MW No. 2 unit was restarted in January. The loss of nuclear production as well as a tightness in LNG supplies have forced Tohoku Electric to boost generation using coal and low sulfur fuel oil in the past few months, according to power industry sources. Between September 2005 and February, Tohoku Electric consumed 970,253 mt of fuel oil, soaring 128.4% from the same period a year earlier, according to the data compiled by the Federation of Electric Power Companies. Its fuel oil procurement for the period stood at 911,344mt, rocketing 136.7% from a year earlier. Tohoku Electric's crude consumption for the September 2005 to February period rose 41.3% to 290,214 mt, while the company's crude procurement stood at 296,492 mt, up 65.6% from the same period last year, according to the FEPC. But Tohoku Electric's LNG procurement for the six-month period fell 14.3% on the year to 1.53 million mt due to a supply scarcity. The company's actual LNG consumption for the period also fell 16.4% on the year to 1.43 million mt. Meanwhile, Tohoku Electric would be increasing its procurements of crude and fuel oil as well as LNG during the current (April-March) fiscal year, senior company sources said late last month. The company plans to buy a total of 1.49 million mt of crude and fuel oil in the current fiscal year which started this month, rising by 9.7% from the planned 1.36 million mt in the previous fiscal year. It intends to buy 2.80 million mt of LNG in the current fiscal year, up 7.4% from the planned 2.61 million mt in the previous fiscal year. Tohoku Electric, based in northeastern Japan, has term contracts totaling 2.77 million mt/year to purchase LNG from Malaysia, Qatar, Indonesia, and Australia. It is also currently in discussion with Indonesia about the possibility of contracting two LNG cargoes a year from the BP-led Tangguh project due to start production in end-2008, Platts reported last month. -- Takeo Kumagai, takeo_kumagai@platts.com For more news, request a free trial to Platts Power in Asia at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/ ------------ BNG plans to return Thorp reprocessing plant to UK's NII London (Platts)--10Apr2006 BNG has submitted its plan to return Thorp reprocessing plant operation to UK regulator Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, or NII, British Nuclear Group told Platts today. Thorp has been closed since April 2005 following discovery that 83 cubic meters (83,000 liters) of highly radioactive liquid had spilled from primary into secondary containment. The spilled liquid was cleaned out by June 2005 but BNG, which manages Thorp on behalf of owner Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, has been looking for a way to bypass the fractured pipework that caused the spill and restart the facility. The NDA said March 30 it wanted to see Thorp restarted by mid-2006 so long as NII approved such a restart and NII's improvement recommendations were met. For more news, request a free trial to Platts NuclearFuel at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/ ------------ FP&L offering reward for identity of pipe damage perpetrator Washington (Platts)--7Apr2006 Florida Power & Light is offering a $100,000 reward for information that leads to identification of the person or persons involved in drilling a small hole into a pressurizer pipe during Turkey Point-3's current refueling outage. FP&L spokeswoman Rachel Scott said the company thought it was important to offer the reward to assist the FBI in its investigation of the equipment damage. The FBI announced the reward today. The ongoing investigation aims to determine whether the damage was a deliberate act or human error. The hole was found March 31 during pre-startup testing and was repaired the following day. A team of inspectors from NRC's Region II was at the plant until late yesterday to investigate the damage and FP&L's response. NRC Region II spokesman Roger Hannah said that, based on the team's findings, "Overall, NRC believes FP&L did well in responding to a difficult situation." ------------ Brunswick license renewal request advances Washington (Platts)--6Apr2006 Brunswick-1 and -2 moved closer to license renewal with the issuance by NRC staff of a final safety evaluation report. The report, released today, says the application for license renewal meets regulatory requirements for the technical portion of NRC's review. A final NRC decision on the application from Carolina Power & Light (Progress Energy) is expected by late June. NRC approval would allow the two units to operate for up to 20 additional years. Brunswick-1's license expires in 2016 and unit 2's in 2014. The 738-page report is on NRC's Adams electronic document system (accession no. ML060890421). ------------ No environmental issues seen with new Mississippi nuclear unit Washington (Platts)--6Apr2006 The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff said there are no environmental issues that would prevent the agency from issuing an early site permit to an Entergy Nuclear subsidiary that is considering building a nuclear power plant at the Grand Gulf site near Vicksburg, Mississippi. In a final environmental impact statement issued Wednesday, staff also found there were "no environmentally preferable or obviously superior sites" for the possible new plant. Entergy subsidiary System Energy Resources submitted an early site permit request to NRC in October 2003. If approved, the permit would allow SERI up to 20 years to decide whether to build another unit at the Mississippi site. A final NRC decision is expected in early 2007. For more information, take a trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://nucweek.platts.com. ------------