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TOKYO – More than one million households on Hokkaido Island, in northern Japan, lost power two days after an earthquake that highlighted the fragility of the country's energy supply following its accident nuclear power in 2011.
The effects of the Hokkaido earthquake and the typhoon that hit Osaka affected the world's third largest economy.
Toyota Motor
Corp.
announced that it would close some production lines on Saturday because the factory of a Toyota subsidiary in Hokkaido that makes transmissions has had to close.
Hokkaido, an island of five million people, has been without nuclear power for more than six years and relied heavily on a single coal-fired power plant near the epicenter of a magnitude 6.6 earthquake. Thursday. When the power plant was damaged by the earthquake, the sudden removal of grid power forced
Hokkaido Electric Power
Co.
close the grid completely, leaving virtually the entire island in the dark.
"It was extremely rare," Akihiko Mayumi, president of the electricity company, told a news conference. "We thought the risk of complete power failure was low."
By restarting more oil and coal power plants, the company will likely be able to restore power to most households on Saturday, the government said. A spokesman for Hokkaido Electric said it would be difficult to completely restore power until repairs were made to the damaged coal plant, which could take a week, according to a Hokkaido Electric spokesman. the managers of the company.
However, some experts wondered whether the long interruption could have been avoided through better planning.
"We need to focus more on how to minimize the damage when these disasters happen," said Kazuhiko Ogimoto, a professor at the University of Tokyo specializing in energy systems. He added that Hokkaido Electric and local officials could quickly reduce energy consumption in some areas in response to the earthquake, allowing at least part of the network to continue. Hokkaido Electric said that given the amount of electricity production suddenly disconnected, it was not possible.
Strengthening the country's resilience to natural disasters is a priority for the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who witnessed this summer.
In Osaka, the strongest typhoon to hit the country in 25 years destroyed hundreds of power poles and flooded parts of the main gateway for Asian visitors to the region, Kansai International Airport on Tuesday. More than 100,000 households in the region were still without electricity Friday.
Kansai airport reopened one of its two terminals on Friday, but a spokeswoman said it would probably be several days before the other terminal reopened. The transport ministry said it may take a month to repair the damaged train line at the airport.
The Hokkaido earthquake killed at least 18 people, according to official estimates, and 24 were reported missing on Friday night, said government spokesman Yoshihide Suga.
SMBC analyst Nikko Securities, Koya Miyamae, estimated that the typhoon and earthquake would reduce Japan's real gross domestic product by at least 0.07 percentage points in 2018, or more.
When an earthquake of magnitude 9 and a tsunami hit Japan on March 11, 2011, the country had 54 nuclear reactors in operation. All were closed the following year, permanently or temporarily. Today, only five of them are in commercial operation and two more will join them shortly. None of them is in Hokkaido.
The coal-powered tomato-atsuma plant normally accounts for half of Hokkaido's electricity. When it was damaged by the earthquake on Thursday, requiring at least a week of repairs, the power plant managers were not able to quickly connect Hokkaido to the main Honshu Island power grid. in Japan. The transmission line has the ability to compensate for only half the power generated by Tomato-Atsuma.
"We are lucky that this did not happen in winter," said a spokesman for the Sapporo-based group Tsuruga, which operates a network of hotels in Hokkaido. He added that most hotels have been restarted after a day or two, but that downtime could be life threatening in January or February, when the temperature usually drops below freezing at night.
"Japan has not learned its lesson since March 11," said Nobuo Tanaka, chairman of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and former executive director of the International Energy Agency. "We must be better prepared for the worst possible scenario."
He and other supporters of nuclear energy said they planned to use this example to argue that Japan needed more nuclear energy to diversify its energy portfolio. . Opponents say that the inability to predict where a strong earthquake could strike and what it could do – illustrated in the Hokkaido earthquake – makes nuclear power plants too risky.
Until the Tomato-Atsuma factory comes back online, the people of Hokkaido have to conserve electricity, said Hiroshige Seko, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry. from the industry. "Families should try to spend time in the same room," he said.
-Megumi Fujikawa contributed to this article
