TOKYO: The Nuclear Regulation Authority on Monday approved a plan for Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. to move nuclear fuel into a reactor at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture, central Japan.

TEPCO plans to start work to carry fuel assemblies into the No. 7 reactor with an output capacity of 1.35 million kilowatts around 4 p.m. Monday.

It is unclear when TEPCO will be able to reactivate the reactor because the company needs to gain approval from local municipalities for a restart.

TEPCO plans to load 872 fuel assemblies currently kept in a pool on the plant’s premises into the reactor. It will take about one and a half months to check whether the fuel assemblies are placed correctly and the emergency core cooling system functions properly.

TEPCO has increased the number of staff on night duty to 51 from eight to ensure safety.

At the plant, straddling the city of Kashiwazaki and the village of Kariwa, the No. 6 and No. 7 reactors in 2017 passed the NRA’s safety screening necessary for a restart.

But problems with antiterrorism measures at the plant came to light in 2018 and later, leading the NRA to put a de facto ban on the operations of the plant. The ban was removed in December last year after TEPCO implemented improvement steps.

In a meeting last month with Yoshifumi Murase, commissioner of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, Niigata Governor Hideyo Hanazumi said that whether to approve the restart of the No. 7 reactor will be discussed based on efforts by the government to ensure safe evacuations of local residents in the event of an emergency.

JIJI Press