The world’s largest nuclear power plant remains closed – Now an employee forgot the safety documents on the roof of his car

The restart of the world’s largest nuclear power plant has been postponed again for safety reasons.

Safety concerns at the Japanese Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant grew even more when an unlucky worker lost a bundle of safety documents. The employee had temporarily placed the papers on the roof of his car and started driving, Bloomberg reported.

Kashiwazaki-Kariwan operaattori Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company) noticed that safety documents were missing when a local resident reported finding papers related to fire and flood precautions. The company is trying to locate another 38 missing pages.

The human error happened just a week after the country’s security authorities had postponed the start-up of the power plant. At least the blunder will not speed up the start-up schedule.

According to Tepco, the employee and his supervisor have received a warning. The company intends to ensure that the staff better adheres to the strict rules related to the handling of documents in the future.

In March 2011, Japan was hit by the strongest earthquake in the country’s history, which was followed by a devastating tsunami. The chain of events caused the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident, which is the worst since the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

All nuclear power plants in Japan were shut down after the Fukushima accident. Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishidaannounced in August 2022 that the country would begin building new nuclear power and decommission existing reactors.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant is located in a seismic zone in Niigata prefecture on the west coast of Japan. The power plant has a total of seven reactors with a combined nominal power of approximately 8,000 megawatts. The power plant was closed for the first time in 2007 as a result of the earthquake.