Tokyo (Platts)--6May2011/805 am EDT/1205 GMT

Japan's government has asked power utility Chubu Electric to suspend all operations at its Hamaoka nuclear power plant in the central part of the country on earthquake safety concerns, Prime Minister Naota Kan said Friday.

Kan said he had asked Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Banri Kaieda to ask Chubu Electric to suspend all operations at the Hamaoka plant, speaking to reporters in a press conference carried by public broadcaster NHK.

The decision is based on the belief that the Chubu Electric nuclear plant may not be sufficiently earthquake-proof, he said. The decision is also based on forecasts that an earthquake of at least magnitude 8 is likely to strike near the plant in the next 30 years, Kan said.

The 1.137 GW reactor No. 4 and 1.267 GW reactor No. 5 are the only ones currently in operation at Hamaoka. The 1.1 GW reactor No. 3 was shut down last November for five months of scheduled maintenance and has not been restarted.

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Hamaoka's reactors No. 1 and No. 2 have been decommissioned due to age.

A Chubu Electric spokesman said he was not able to confirm the prime minister's announcement.

Kan said the government might allow Chubu Electric to restart operations at Hamaoka if the company could demonstrate it has installed sufficient safety measures to withstand high magnitude earthquakes.

The Hamaoka plant was hit by a 6.5 magnitude earthquake in August 2009 that knocked reactor No. 4 and No. 5 offline. The No. 4 unit was restarted about a month later, but the No. 5 unit was offline until earlier this year.

Reactor No. 3 was in maintenance at the time of the 2009 earthquake and restarted later that year.

Chubu Electric has had to step up its term LNG purchases due to the continuing outage from the quake over the last year-and-a-half.

METI ordered Japanese power utilities to adopt new emergency safety measures at their nuclear power plants after the massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami that crippled Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant.

News of nuclear power plant outages and restarts in Japan are closely watched as they can lead to an increase or decrease in demand for feedstocks such as fuel oil, crude and LNG for power generation.

--Takeo Kumagai, takeo_kumagai@platts.com