Mihama Nuclear Power Plant

2022: Leak of 7 tonnes of radioactive water

A leak of 7 tons of radioactive water occurred at the third reactor of the Mihama nuclear power plant in Japan, Kyodo Agency reported on August 1, 2022.

2021: Restart of the third power unit after 10 years of downtime

In June 2021, in the Japanese prefecture of Fukui, after almost ten years of downtime, the third power unit of the Mihama nuclear power plant was restarted. The reactor returned to service is one of the oldest not only in Japan, but also in the world. The official launch of the third power unit of Mihama NPP with an American reactor of the PWR type took place in December 1976, respectively, at the time of restart this technical facility crossed the age limit of forty-four years. This is practically a record among operating nuclear power plants, only the Swiss Beznau is older, whose similar reactor manufactured by Westinghouse has been working tirelessly since 1972.

The first two Mihama power units were built and launched in 1970 and 1972, respectively. A remarkable fact: each subsequent object has a capacity greater than its predecessor. The capacity of the first reactor was only three hundred forty megawatts, the second - five hundred, but the third already has a capacity of over eight hundred twenty megawatts. Mihama, together with its "colleagues," was built during the so-called atomic boom, which allowed Japan to significantly improve its own energy ratio and created the prerequisites for a technical breakthrough, thanks to which Japan is still rightfully considered one of the most technically and technologically developed countries. We add that three of the ten most powerful world nuclear power plants - Fukushima, Kashiwazaki-Kariva and Ohi - are also in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Mihama, like its neighbor in the Ohi prefecture, provides electricity to the largest production cluster in the Osaka region, whose domestic gross product is comparable to that of an entire country - such as Mexico. That is, without the slightest exaggeration, we can say that nuclear power is one of the most important components of not only technological progress, but also the national welfare of Japan.

At the same time, Reuters in its publication cites the opinion of the former deputy chairman of the commission on nuclear power under the cabinet of ministers Tatsuhiro Suzuki, who calls the restart of the power unit almost a planetary disaster. And he has grounds for that.

Earlier, the NPP management company Kansai Electric admitted the fact of receiving bribes and valuable gifts from the administration of one of the cities where their generation facilities are located. The city similarly tried to influence the higher authorities deciding on the operation of power plants in order to prevent their closure and, as a result, the loss of the source of funding for local budgets and jobs for the population. The fact of bribery swam out and provoked a loud scandal, but Kansai Electric assured that they had conducted a thorough internal investigation and this would not happen again.

And here in the yard is the abnormally hot summer of a turbulent 2021. Countries are conducting mass vaccination of the population and are trying with all their might to overcome the crisis provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic and the protracted lockdown. Production reaches the pre-crisis level, which leads to an increase in electricity consumption, and this pulls the demand for energy resources along the chain. The complex of these conditions led to the fact that the cost of natural gas in Europe jumped to almost four hundred dollars per thousand cubic meters and, if the abnormal heat does not recede, there is every reason to think that this is not the limit. But if Germany, the Netherlands and Poland are saving their industry by buying more and more coal, then this is rather difficult for island Japan. Therefore, it is not surprising that high-ranking representatives of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry visited Fukui Prefecture more than fifty times in 2020 alone, studying the possibility of restarting the third power unit of the Mihama station. The budget needs money, industry needs electricity - and you can get it only by overcoming the "Fukushima syndrome."

According to official statistics, in 2019, atomic generation in the energy balance of Japan occupied a modest three percent, but in today's race of economies every megawatt counts, and therefore the country is doing the only possible thing: it is returning to service everything that is possible, including "old men."

2004: Accident at third power unit, five employees killed

In 2004, in the third power unit, due to a breakthrough of the high-pressure line, a hot steam killed five station employees, six more received serious burns. The commission investigating the causes of the accident found that the operator Kansai Electric Power only carried out checks on the composition of the water, and the reactor piping itself had not been checked for years. The power unit was shut down, re-launched in 2007, but it had only four years to work - before the Fukushima accident, after which it was again decommissioned.

1991: Accident at the second power unit, radiation leak

During its existence on Miham, emergency situations and even accidents have repeatedly occurred. For example, in 1991, one of the steam generator pipes burst at the second power unit, which led to the operation of the reactor emergency cooling system. As a result of the accident, Japan did^[1] anything.]

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