Tokyo Electric Completes All Reactor Shutdowns

TOKYO -- - Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it has completed the shutdown of all 17 of its nuclear reactors for emergency inspections.

TEPCO stopped operations at around 12:00 noon at its last running nuclear reactor in Fukushima, 200 kilometres northeast of Tokyo.

The company has been forced to shut down all its nuclear reactors for emergency inspections after admitting to falsifying safety records at nuclear plants since the late 1980s.

With the first halt to all its nuclear reactors since 1976, TEPCO has lost 17.38 megawatts, or about 30 pct of its power generating capacity.

"We are seriously facing the fact that an unprecedented situation occurred due to a series of scandals," TEPCO President Tsunehisa Katsumata said in a statement.

"Our company will pursue inspections and carry out measures to prevent such a scandal from being repeated so that we can regain people's trust," he said.

The scandal has angered residents near the reactors, most of whom are opposed to the immediate re-starting of the nuclear plants. The approval of local communities is a pre-requisite to resuming operations.

"We have not set any specific timetable for the resumption of the nuclear reactors here," said Sekiya Hiroyuki, an official of Kashiwazaki city, TEPCO's largest power plant host, which houses seven reactors.

"It is still uncertain when residents can accept TEPCO's request for the resumption as people living near the reactors are still concerned about a future accident," Hiroyuki said.

"We hope we can restart at least 10 reactors by summer, when electricity demand is to hit a peak, but the prospects for resumption are by no means certain," a TEPCO spokesman said.

The company has started boosting the operations of other types of power generators -- thermal power and hydroelectric power generations -- and plans to buy electricity from other utility companies in a bid to make up for the drop in nuclear output.