Japan's Tepco scraps plans for new reactors at stricken plant TOKYO (Reuters) - Tokyo Electric Power Co, or Tepco, said on Friday it had notified Japan's trade ministry it was dropping plans for two more nuclear reactors at its Fukushima Daiichi plant, paralyzed last year by a devastating earthquake. Tepco said it would scrap this month a 253 megawatt (MW) emergency power facility comprised of diesel generators and gas turbines at the Hitachinaka station north of Tokyo. In contrast, Tohoku Electric Power Co retained its plans to build a new 825 MW nuclear reactor near the Fukushima Daiichi station, but said it could give no date for the reactor's commercial operation, earlier set for 2021. Tohoku officials told a news conference they expected it would be difficult to build and operate a third nuclear plant due to protests from local authorities. Utilities this week submitted to the trade ministry power capacity plans for the financial year starting on April 1, but declined to detail power supply plans for the summer until they gather estimates of surplus power supply from other utilities and customer demand. Tepco, Japan's biggest buyer of liquefied natural gas, has said it would be hard to restart in 2012/13 any reactors shut for maintenance, since they face strong opposition from local communities hosting its sole facility unaffected by the quake, the Kashiwazaki Kariwa plant. The magnitude-9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami caused reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, triggering a radiation crisis and widespread contamination. Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori and Risa Maeda; Editing by Clarence Fernandez