TEPCO plans to increase electricity rates again

Alternative to restarting its moribund nuclear plants.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, the cash-strapped operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, said the proposed rate hike is part of a plan to take it back to profitability.

TEPCO plans to raise electricity rates by 8.5% on average in January 2014. It raised its industrial power rates by 15% in April 2012, and by 8.5% for households the following summer to pay for the cleanup and decommissioning at the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 20 years.

Japanese banks, however, usually do not lend money to companies that post net losses for three straight years. Tepco has already had two straight years of huge net losses and now is rapidly approaching its third.

TEPCO President Naomi Hirose said then that the only way his company would be able to turn a profit is if it can resume operations at some of the seven reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in northwestern Japan.