Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. (TEPCO), the utility responsible for the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, has hit a business dead end. Not only is it hemorrhaging customers after the liberalization of Japan's retail electricity market, but its main hope of growing profits, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture, has no perceptible chance of being restarted.

       TEPCO is also liable for some 16 trillion yen (about $140.83 billion) to decommission the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant and pay compensation to nuclear disaster victims. Meanwhile, fuel prices have soared. All this has added up to a projected loss for the current fiscal year ending in March 2022 -- the company's first in nine years.

       The greatest risk stemming from TEPCO's troubles is that the utility may become unable to fulfill its heaviest responsibility: aiding the recovery of Fukushima Prefecture. Thus, the business's restructuring needs to be drastically rethought.

       The biggest problem with how the company is reviving its business is how much it is leaning on the chances of restarting the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant. Distrust of the firm is strong, considering it is responsible for one of the worst nuclear disasters in history.

       The plant has already suffered a series of embarrassing revelations this year, including someone gaining illicit entry using a different person's ID card, and malfunctions in intruder detection systems -- both major failures in the station's anti-terror measures. After it completed its inspections of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) -- which must approve any reactor restarts -- effectively forbade TEPCO from restarting the station's No. 7 reactor.

       In September, TEPCO released a report on the causes of these problems and policies to prevent a recurrence. The document revealed that the intruder alert system had been left broken for a long time due to an overemphasis on cost-saving. And this and other issues revealed a corporate culture with a disdainful attitude to safety. The pleas of those on-site trying to sound the alarm about the problems apparently never reached TEPCO's executive suite.

       "Putting safety first and gaining the trust and understanding of locals are prerequisites for the plant restart we are aiming for," TEPCO President Tomoaki Kobayakawa told a press conference. And he is so determined because getting just one of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa power station's reactors back on-line is projected to add 50 billion yen (about $440 million) to the utility's bottom line.

       But locals' distrust of TEPCO is at a fever pitch, and getting the host municipalities' approval for reactor restarts will be very difficult. Meanwhile, pie-in-the-sky plans to get the utility back on track are only making the situation worse and grinding employee morale into the dust.

       On the other hand, the company also has many hydro power stations -- the most stable of renewable energy sources -- and is building large wind farms. TEPCO also has a joint venture with fellow regional utility Chubu Electric Power Co. to develop carbon-free thermal power plants burning ammonia.

       If TEPCO takes full advantage of these strengths, then it should be able to restructure itself without relying on atomic energy.

       It has been a decade since the Fukushima Daiichi catastrophe. TEPCO must wake up to the fact that, if it does not remake itself as a leader of the carbon-free energy era, it will fail in its duty to Fukushima Prefecture's recovery.

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