News Article: Nuclear agreement paves way for fuel recycling in Japan

[John Jacobus <crispy_bird@YAHOO.COM>]

>From Nature 432, 539 (02 December 2004)

 

------------------------- 

Nuclear agreement paves way for fuel recycling in

Japan 



ICHIKO FUYUNO 



Uranium reprocessing plant set for trial runs early

next year. 



[TOKYO] Japan's bid to recycle nuclear fuel at home

came closer to reality this month, with the

announcement that a massive, US$27-billion recycling

plant is set to begin trial runs early next year.



On 22 November, local government officials in northern

Aomori, the prefecture where the plant is being built,

said that they had signed a safety agreement with its

operator, Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited, to allow the

tests to go ahead.



The decision had been eagerly awaited by Japanese

power companies, who see recycling as essential for

the long-term future of the country's nuclear-power

industry. Japan currently gets about one-third of its

electricity from nuclear power.



Aomori had hesitated to approve the tests because of

safety problems involving faulty welds and leaks of

radioactive water from the plant's spent-fuel storage

pool.



But earlier in November, Japan's Atomic Energy

Commission endorsed the recycling plan, and Aomori's

licensing decision opens the way for the plant to

begin operating. The prefecture's decision is

"remarkably important", says Yohsaku Fuji, chairman of

the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan.



The trial runs will last for a year and use depleted

uranium, a by-product of nuclear-fuel processing in

Japan, instead of spent nuclear fuel. If it is

successful, the plant could start reprocessing spent

fuel in 2006.



Japanese power companies plan to burn the reprocessed

fuel, which contains plutonium as well as uranium, in

their existing nuclear-power stations. The country

eventually hopes to use the fuel in 'fast-breeder'

reactors, although their development has been stalled

since an accident at a prototype reactor in 1995.



Japan's reprocessing plans have been heavily

criticized for their high costs — and because they

produce material that could theoretically be used in

nuclear weapons.



In addition, the plans do not address how Japan should

dispose of an estimated 200 tonnes of spent nuclear

fuel a year that the recycling plant can't

accommodate. Japan has said this will be addressed in

2010. "The government has put off the disposal

problem, which would affect Japan's entire

nuclear-power policies," says Hajimu Yamana, a

nuclear-energy professor at Kyoto University.



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© 2004 Nature Publishing Group

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-- John

John Jacobus, MS

Certified Health Physicist

e-mail:  crispy_bird@yahoo.com





		

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