Fire put out at JERA's thermal power plant in central Japan
TOKYO (Reuters) -Fire broke out at the Taketoyo thermal power station in Aichi prefecture in central Japan on Wednesday, prompting plant operations to be suspended, but the fire was put out by late evening, its owner JERA said.
Taketoyo has a power generation capacity of 1,070 MW, making it among the largest in Japan. JERA, a joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power and Chubu Electric Power, is Japan's largest utility power company.
In a statement on Wednesday, JERA said that at around 3:14 p.m. local time (0614 GMT), smoke was detected and fire was discovered on the belt conveyor transporting fuel at the plant.
Operation at the facility was suspended shortly after, the JERA statement said, adding that there were no injuries.
Separately, a JERA spokesperson said it was not yet clear what had caused the fire and when the plant would resume operations.
The plant is located about 40 km (25 miles) south of Nagoya, the biggest city in central Japan.
Chubu Electric Power, which serves the nation's industrial heartland, said it did not expect the halt in power production at the fire-stricken plant to affect its electricity supply to end users.
(Reporting by Satoshi Sugiyama, Mariko Katsumura, Kaori Kaneko and Kantaro Komiya, Kiyoshi Takenaka; Writing by Katya Golubkova; Editing by Kim Coghill, Tom Hogue, Janane Venkatraman and Louise Heavens)
