nuclear-news

The danger of Rokkasho Nuclear Reprocessing Plant

Concern in US as Japanese nuclear reprocessing plant completed http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2013/s3760280.htm Mark Willacy reported, May 16, 2013 TONY EASTLEY: It’s taken more than 20 years and $20 billion to build, and in a few months time Japan’s state-of-the-art nuclear reprocessing plant will be ready for operation.

The Rokkasho plant in far northern Japan will be capable of turning used nuclear fuel into eight tonnes of plutonium a year, although the Japanese say this weapons-grade plutonium will be used for power generation only.

That hasn’t soothed American concerns though. It’s worried about the security of the plutonium stockpiles and the risk that the new plant could stoke a nuclear race in the region.

North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy was given an exclusive look inside the Rokkasho nuclear complex. MARK WILLACY: In the spring sunshine, Keiko Kikukawa tends to her daffodils. The winter snow has finally melted up here in Japan’s far north and her fields are beginning to burst with colour.

When Keiko Kikukawa isn’t selling her flowers, she’s campaigning to uproot what she sees at the biggest pest in this district – the Rokkasho nuclear complex a few kilometres down the road.

“First of all, Rokkasho village has become a dump for radioactive waste from around Japan,” she tells me. “If there was an accident it’d be catastrophic,” she says.

Keiko Kikukawa is talking about the sprawling Rokkasho nuclear re-processing plant.

Its operator, Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited, has spent two decades and $28 billion building the facility……Japan has 17,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel sitting in pools across the country. If Rokkasho is given the green light to begin operation, it can turn this fuel into eight tonnes of plutonium every year.

The problem is, this eight tonnes of plutonium will be weapons-grade – meaning it could theoretically be used to make nuclear bombs…..

May 16, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, reprocessing