TEPCO pushes for nuclear plant restarts over shareholder protests

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) vowed to restart its nuclear reactors across Japan, dismissing a bid by shareholders and organizers to force the utility to abandon nuclear power and commit to future investment in renewable sources.

TEPCO is the nominal owner of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that sustained catastrophic damage and three reactor meltdowns after the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami breached cores and damaged cooling systems in March 2011.

TEPCO was one of nine Japanese power companies holding their annual board meetings on the same day. The boards of each utility voted to reject shareholder proposals to decommission nuclear facilities.

Greenpeace and Japanese anti-nuclear groups purchased voting shares and organized to present TEPCO with proposals to keep its nuclear fleet shuttered, invest in decommissioning, appoint representatives of watchdog groups to the company board and spend more on renewable power generating capacity.

TEPCO board members were met with angry protests outside the shareholders meeting. Banners urged TEPCO not to repeat the mistakes that led to the Fukushima crisis, while Katsutaka Idogawa, the former mayor of Futaba — home of the crippled Daiichi plant — scolded company officials for destroying their ancestral homeland.

Upwards of 160,000 people were forced to evacuate the towns surrounding Fukushima, hundreds of square miles around the plant will be uninhabitable for generations because of radioactive contamination, and radioactive water continues to pour from the facility into the Pacific Ocean at the rate of 80,000 gallons per day. Irradiated rubble and contaminated soil and debris from the area are being distributed around Japan, elevating the radiation risk for the entire country.

The cleanup and decommissioning of Fukushima is estimated to take 40 years, and billions of dollars. TEPCO is also on the hook for financial compensation for those injured or displaced by the plant failure.

With a very brief exception, none of Japan’s 48 theoretically still-functional nuclear reactors have operated since soon after the 2011 earthquake. Japan’s response in the months after the start of the disaster included nationwide conservation programs that reduced electrical demand enough to withstand the initial shock. In the ensuing years, Japan has had to increase use of fossil fuels, with 2013 costs up 50 percent over the year prior to the quake.

TEPCO was left nearly insolvent by the disaster, but was saved by a multi-million dollar Japanese government bailout and large bank loans. Banks and insurance companies control more than 70 percent of TEPCO shares, according to Bloomberg News.

Tokyo Power sustained deep losses in 2011 and 2012, but returned to profitability last year without a kilowatt of nuclear power generation. Still, according to Tokyo-based energy consultant Tom O’Sullivan, who spoke to Bloomberg, investors would not have sunk money into TEPCO without the promise of reactor restarts.

That bet is made safer by the assumption that, should another disaster befall the industry, Japanese taxpayers will again foot the bill. TEPCO has also increased electricity rates to consumers, and shareholders said they expect fee hikes again in the near future.

Despite industry desires, no reactors have been allowed to restart under the safety rules put in place by the new Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRA). Several restarts have been proposed, but safety certifications have been delayed by a lack of qualified inspectors, says the NRA. Other units will likely never be restarted because of local opposition (Japan’s laws give great weight to local governments in power plant decisions).

Over three years after the start of the Fukushima crisis, a majority of the country continues to oppose restarting idled nuclear plants. According to March poll conducted by The Asahi Shimbun, 59 percent of Japanese do not want to see the atomic reactors brought back online. In addition, 77 percent of respondents said they support a plan to phase out nuclear energy, and nearly 90 percent said they were concerned about the possibility of another nuclear accident.

The survey, it should be noted, specifically excluded some parts of Fukushima Prefecture from the sample.

A majority of TEPCO’s shareholders, however, made it clear they would resist any attempts to wean the country off nuclear power. The shareholders also defeated anti-nuclear board nominees and fought off moves to expand TEPCO’s renewable energy investments.

“I suspect that TEPCO is returning to its former arrogant ways,” said Yui Kimura, a leading member of the Nuclear Phase-out TEPCO Shareholders Movement, in The Asahi Shimbun.

TEPCO President Naomi Hirose told assembled shareholder the company was moving ahead with plans to restart its reactors in Niigata Prefecture, pointing to new government regulations as the answer to pubic fears. “We are promoting safety measures, such as construction of sea walls,” Hirose said.

The Niigata’s facility first filed for recertification in September, but the NRA soon after found the plant had a number of damaged fuel rods. Workers had attempted to jam 26 fuel assemblies into reactors, creating “abnormalities” and leading an inspector to say that TEPCO’s safety culture had “serious problems.”

Nineteen of Japan’s reactors have been submitted for relicensing, though neither regulators nor industry officials could give a firm timeline for when nuclear plants will be allowed to restart.