Impacts On International Energy Market Of Unplanned Shutdown Of Kashiwazaki-kariwa Nuclear Power Station

摘要

All of the units of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station have been shut down due to the Niigataken Chuetsu-oki Earthquake that occurred at around 10:13 a.m. on July 16, 2007. Although the safety protection system worked as designed to secure safety for all reactors, many minor troubles occurred.rnThe seven-reactor nuclear power station has a total capacity at 8.212 GW amounting to some 16% of Japan's nuclear power generation capacity and had been planned to operate at some 75% of its capacity in FY 2007.rnThe unplanned shutdown of the large-capacity nuclear power station is expected to exert significant impacts on international crude oil and gas markets. Electric power utilities, which have developed various electricity sources to diversify risks and prevent price hikes for one fuel from causing substantial rises in overall power generation costs, may have to keep close watch on market trend while considering such a variety of cases. And also, energy industries always keep certain level of fuel inventories and can change in the product mix of refineries to prepare for sharp changes in supply and demand. The extraordinary shift to fossil fuels will also work to increase greenhouse gas emissions (CO_2).rnRelevant parties should maximize their efforts to restart the nuclear power station as early as possible while giving top priority to safety. All energy industry players including electric power utilities should recognize the potential risk of a prolonged shutdown of a large-capacity power station like the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, understand impacts of such shutdown on the global or Asian energy market and take advantage of such knowledge for future risk management.