The president of the Tokyo Electric Power Company said that the company was at a crossroads, requiring its first rate hike since 2012 unless it was allowed to restart the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station, which is one of the world's largest nuclear power plants.
TEPCO President Naomi Hirose in an interview on Saturday noted that the company, which serves 29 million customers, was likely to post a profit in 2015, just as it did in 2014 after three years of losses. But this was unlikely to continue, because TEPCO has been cutting costs in part by postponing some needed repairs, The Japan Times reported.
In early 2014, TEPCO said it had expected to restart the idled plant in July of this year by putting two of its seven reactors back online.
The plant has had its own history of earthquake-related problems and had only four units operating in March 2011, when the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power station lead to a shut down of all 48 of Japan's nuclear reactors.
The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa NPP, along the Sea of Japan,, is in two towns, Kashiwazaki and Kariwa, in the Niigata Prefecture about 175 miles from Tokyo.
An offshore earthquake in July 2007 caused a 21-month shutdown of all seven Kashiwazaki-Kariwa reactors. Four of them, Units 1, 5, 6, and 7 were back online when the March 2011 earthquake rocked the other side of Japan in an event that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi facility.
In its most recent earnings report, TEPCO said that it would post a net income of $4.4 billion for the year ending March 31, up from $3.6 billion in the previous year.
Pretax profits for the fiscal year beginning March 31, 2015 are expected to reach $550 million if the nuclear plant is allowed to restart in October, the newspaper said. It is expected to be $1.68 billion if the facility restarts in July.
"Even as Kashiwazaki-Kariwa remains offline, we posted a profit last year and can probably do so again this year," Hirose said. "I wouldn't say there won't be a third time, but we cannot expect it can last forever," he said.