Restarting Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is a delicate affair.
Fifteen years ago, Japan (and the world) lived through one of the worst nuclear disasters ever at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
It was the ‘perfect storm’: a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggered a powerful tsunami that overwhelmed the plant’s defenses.
Lack of power disabled the cooling systems for the reactors, leading to meltdowns in three reactors, hydrogen explosions, and significant releases of radioactive materials into the environment, prompting the evacuation of over 150,000 people.
The disaster led to Japan shutting down all of its 54 reactors, and only now is the world’s largest nuclear power plant being restarted.
But will it? News arose today that Japan was forced to suspend operations at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa mere hours after its restart.
⚛️ Japan’s largest #Nuclear plant Kashiwazaki-Kariwa was shut down again just one day after restart.
Operator TEPCO halted operations after an alarm during startup. No radiation impact reported. pic.twitter.com/aPG37pN2RT
— Defence24com (@Defence24eng) January 26, 2026
BBC reported:
“An alarm sounded ‘during reactor-start-up procedures’ at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa north-west of Tokyo but the reactor remained ‘stable’, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) spokesperson Takashi Kobayashi said.
Reactor number six restarted on Wednesday a day later than planned due to an alarm malfunction – the first at the plant to be turned on since the 2011 Fukushima disaster”
The world’s largest nuclear power plant in Japan has been shut down the day after coming back online. It’s the first attempt to restart a nuclear plant in Japan following the Fukushima disaster in 2011. pic.twitter.com/7qMprtV9fz
— TaiwanPlus News (@taiwanplusnews) January 23, 2026
After the suspension of reactor number six last Thursday (22), spokesperson Kobayashi said it was ‘stable and there is no radioactive impact outside’.
The reactor was due to begin operating commercially next month.
“Kobayashi said Tepco was ‘currently investigating the cause’ of the incident and did not say when operations would resume.
The seventh reactor at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is not expected to be turned back on until 2030, while the other five could be decommissioned.”
TEPCO is to shut down the No.6 reactor at its nuclear power plant after a control rod alarm went off. TEPCO had reactivated the unit at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant at 7:02 p.m. on Jan 21 by extracting its control rods for a self-sustaining chain reaction.pic.twitter.com/mHtZ0ZAdBH https://t.co/zkA6s0eKJS
— 旧裸のエノラ・ゲイ少年倶楽部 ★タレントU 僕のソーセージを食え 高市早苗３２回 とうとう出たね… (@WaratteDappiCX) January 24, 2026
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