Korea: The significant earthquake that struck Japan’s eastern coast on January 1st has brought attention to the nations vulnerability to natural disasters and raised new questions about efforts to restart its nuclear power.
Due to its location on the seismically active” Ring of Fire” around the Pacific Ocean, mountainous Japan, which is prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, is covered in nuclear power plants.
The scale 7.5 earthquake that struck the Hokuriku place on Monday, killing more than 80 people and nbsp, destroyed infrastructure, and left homes without strength, came days after regulators lifted an administrative restrictions on Tokyo Electric’s Kashiwazaki- Kariwa nuclear power plant.
Tepco hopes to get local approval to resume the flower, which has been out of commission since 2012 and is located about 120 kilometers from the earthquake’s epicenter. Due to health violations, including a failure to protect radioactive materials, the power was prohibited from operating the plant in 2021.
Analysts at Rystad Energy stated in a consumer note that” the Chinese public is also generally less favorable toward atomic power then than they were before the Fukushima disaster.”
” As a result, public opinion and possibly federal plan are likely to be hypersensitive to any new energy plant disruptions brought on by the most recent earthquake or any subsequent ones.”
After the tsunami and Fukushima meltdown in March 2011, Japan had intended to stop using nuclear power, but due to rising energy costs and ongoing electricity shortages, it has decided to restart idle power and build next-generation reactors instead.
Tepco reported that water had leaked from the world’s largest nuclear fuel pools at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant following the earthquake of January 1, but that radiation levels were standard.
According to Yukihiko Hoshino, a part of the Kashiwazaki city council who opposed the plant restart,” Citizens had felt that Tepco could possibly reset reactors by the end of 2024, but this earthquake seems to have reignited an air of fear.”
He said the Fukushima disaster came to mind when he heard the storm warning on Monday.
On Thursday, the first trading day since the earthquake, Tepco shares dropped as much as 8 % before closing up 2.2 %.
Hokuriku Electric, whose idled Shika plant is situated about 65 kilometers from the epicenter of the earthquake, lost as much as 8 % before paring losses and ended down 2.2 %.
After the earthquake, the company reported oil leaks and water spills from the plant’s spent nuclear fuel pools, and it stated in October that it plans to resume the No 2 reactor it sometime after April 2026.
According to Tatsunori Kawai, chief planner at Au Kabu.com Securities, today’s big offering was primarily caused by general marketplace sentiment and first panic selling.
Eventually, traders realized that this excessive offering was unjustified, he continued.
Japan, the second-largest importer of liquefied natural gas ( LNG ), does not immediately tap spot markets as it did following an earthquake in March 2022, according to Rystad.
Place energy costs indicated business as usual, Rystad said, even though continuous power plant interruptions, like in 2022, could lead to purchases of the super-cold energy.