“At no point was the plant under any danger, and the reactor has been brought to a stable shutdown,’’ said Eiji Yamamoto, a spokesman for Kyushu Electric. “There has been no effect on radiation levels outside the plant.’’
Still, the shutdown came as the government was renewing a push to restart reactors that were idled after the nuclear accident at Fukushima in March. Kyushu Electric said that inspection work had been carried out on a valve of the condenser in question yesterday, raising the possibility that human error had triggered the shutdown.
“As we saw in Fukushima, cooling systems are central to the safety of nuclear reactors,’’ said Chihiro Kamisawa, a researcher at the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, an antinuclear organization.
“We cannot take lightly the fact that there was also trouble with the cooling system at Genkai,’’ he said. “It underscores the fact that safety problems riddle Japan’s reactors.’’
After yesterday’s shutdown, only 10 of 54 reactors remain on the grid, threatening to deprive the nation of the source of almost a third of its electricity. At least four of six reactors at the Fukushima plant, which suffered meltdowns earlier this year, are expected to be permanently decommissioned.
