nuclear-news

Japan will import 1000 tons of nuclear waste every year for 7 years

The Fukushima disaster and the voyage of the 5,100-ton Pacific Grebe highlights the dilemma facing Japan and the world’s nuclear industry:Radioactive waste is deadly and needs to be locked away for thousands of years, so how can any storage site be guaranteed safe and permanent?

“Japan has 1,000 tons of spent fuel coming out of reactors every year, and there are 7 more years before the spent fuel pools are filled,” 

Japan Prepares for Its First Import of Radioactive Waste Since Earthquake, Bloomberg, By Yuriy Humber, Chisaki Watanabe and Stuart Biggs – Aug 14, 2011  Japan is preparing to receive its first import of highly radioactive waste since March, when an earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The vessel Pacific Grebe set sail Aug. 3 to Japan from Britain with more than 30 metric tons of radioactive waste on board. The cargo, Japanese spent fuel reprocessed in the U.K., is returning sealed in 76 stainless steel canisters packed into 130-ton containers. It will arrive early next month at the Mutsu-Ogawara port in northern Honshu for delivery to Japan Nuclear Fuel’s nearby Rokkasho storage site.

About 400 kilometers south of the port, thousands of workers are struggling to contain radiation leaks from the meltdown of three reactors at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant, which amounts to 300 tons of waste.

The Fukushima disaster and the voyage of the 5,100-ton Pacific Grebe highlights the dilemma facing Japan and the world’s nuclear industry:Radioactive waste is deadly and needs to be locked away for thousands of years, so how can any storage site be guaranteed safe and permanent?

“It’s a very big problem with no acceptable solution,” said Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster’s school of biomedical sciences, who studied Sweden’s nuclear waste storage proposals. “And more waste is being produced every year.”…

Not Permanent

Japan’s Rokkasho isn’t designated as a permanent storage site for nuclear waste — despite costing almost 3 trillion yen ($39 billion) to build its five facilities on 740 hectares (1,828 acres) and having 2,450 staff on site. Japan won’t have a permanent site operational until the 2040’s, according to Yuichiro Akashi, a spokesman for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan. The group aims to identify a location by 2017, he said.

“It’s a tough situation considering how long it takes to build one,” Akashi said. “A final repository is something we can’t do without so the work will continue.”

Meantime, radioactive waste is piling up and Rokkasho’s storage space for spent nuclear fuel is more than 90 percent full; it has capacity for 3,000 tons and contains 2,834 tons, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. spokesman Hirotake Tatehana said.

Rokkasho, three kilometers from the Pacific coast in Aomori prefecture, stores two main types of waste: spent fuel from reactors, and what’s left over after spent fuel is processed to extract uranium and plutonium for reuse. The latter is what’s arriving on the Pacific Grebe…..

Storage Shortage

Each weighing about 400 kilograms. Japan is now building its own spent fuel processing plant at Rokkasho.

Japan contracted the U.K. and France to process its fuel in the 1970s and the waste from the procedure is shipped back for storage. The Pacific Grebe cargo is the second of 11 that will return a total of 900 canisters of waste,

Japan’s response to the storage space dilemma for spent fuel is the same as the U.S., which is to keep it in reactor buildings.

Spent Fuel

The fuel is stored in 40-feet deep pools of circulating water that cool the uranium rods removed from reactor cores every three years and block release of radiation. The fuel still contains 20 times the amount of radiation that would kill a human if exposed for one hour, according to U.S. regulators.

“Japan has 1,000 tons of spent fuel coming out of reactors every year, and there are 7 more years before the spent fuel pools are filled,” said Taro Kono, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker and opponent of nuclear power…..

Rokkasho Challenge

“The idea that these facilities would be around for thousands of years would not be a popular topic,” said Michael Friedlander, who has 13 years of experience running nuclear power plants in the U.S. “The reality of it is until there is an alternative that’s what we are looking at.”

Japan also faces technological challenges in processing spent fuel. Reprocessing at Rokkasho has been delayed 18 times since 1997 and is now due to start in Oct. 2012, according to Japan Nuclear Fuel…..

ww.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-14/japan-prepares-for-its-first-import-of-radioactive-waste-since-earthquake.html

August 16, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, wastes