The Shika Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant located in the town of Shika, Ishikawa, Japan. It is owned and operated by the Hokuriku Electric Power Company. It is on a site that is 1.6 km² (395 acres).

On June 18, 1999 during an inspection, an emergency control rod insertion was to be performed on Unit 1. One rod was to be inserted into the reactor, however, due to improper following of the procedure, instead of one rod inserting, 3 rods withdrew. For the next 15 minutes, the reactor was in a dangerous criticality state. This event was not revealed until March 15, 2007, since it was covered up in the records. The unit has been shut down since that date.

Immediately after the event was revealed, the president of the Hokuriku Electric Power Company was called to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry office and ordered to shut down the unit 1 reactor. Note that this was not the same president as when the event happened in 1999.

On June 5, 2007 the committee chairman of the Japan Nuclear Safety Commission inspected the control rod housing and drive mechanisms and evaluated that the event was due to cutting corners. He also concluded that the reactor operators at the time were under a lot of pressures from above, and simply punishing the operators would not be an effective deterrent for future accidents. One proposed measure was to have alarms automatically record when they go off so that records can not be altered.

A lower court had ordered the entire plant to be shut down, but that decision was later overturned by Nagoya's high court. The utility put in a request to the Ishikawa prefectural government and the town of Shika for the restart of unit 1. The unit returned to power on May 11, 2009 and resumed commercial operation on May 13.

Reactors on Site

Unit	Type	Commission date	Electric Power	Thermal Power	Maker
Shika - 1	BWR	July 30, 1993	540 MW	1,593 MW	Hitachi
Shika - 2	ABWR	March 15, 2006	1,358 MW	3,926 MW	Hitachi

Shika Nuclear Power Plant
Country	Japan
Construction began	July 1, 1989
Commission date	July 30, 1993
Operator(s)	Hokuriku Electric Power Company
Reactor information
Reactors operational	1 x 540 MW 1 x 1358 MW
Power generation information
Annual generation	7,456 GW·h
Net generation	54,864 GW·h