KASHIWAZAKI, Niigata Prefecture–A small electrical fire that broke out in a conference room at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in the early hours of Jan. 17 was quickly contained.
Employees heard the fire alarm go off at around 3:41 am, rushed to the meeting room on the second floor of a designated building with an anti-quake “seismic isolation” system and saw a laptop computer engulfed in flames.
They called emergency services and battled the fire themselves in the meantime.
Five fire engines and an ambulance were dispatched to the scene. Firefighters confirmed the fire was under control by 4:13 am
One personal computer and part of a table were burned, but no one was injured. Officials said they found no sign of leakage of radioactive material.
TEPCO said the fire apparently started near where the computer’s display and keyboard connect.
The building was built in 2009, two years after the 2007 Chuetsu offshore earthquake, as an operating base in the event of a disaster.
But regulators found the structure did not meet the new seismic standards set out after the 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant.
The plant’s reactors are currently idle, but TEPCO aims to resume the facility’s operations in or after this summer.
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