Japan struggles to find nuclear waste disposal site

Japan is facing difficulties selecting a final disposal site for high-level radioactive waste left from spent fuel at nuclear power plants across the nation.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/10/27/japan/nuclear-waste-site-struggles/

First-stage surveys to find locations suited to host an underground storage facility have been conducted in three municipalities — two in Hokkaido and one in Saga Prefecture — despite continuing anxieties among local residents.

With nuclear power plants in Japan gradually going back online, there remains no clear timeline for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, keeping the government’s goal of a nuclear fuel cycle out of reach.

High-level radioactive waste, which is vitrified after uranium and plutonium are extracted from spent fuel for reuse, presents a significant challenge. Japan’s plan for final disposal involves burying the waste more than 300 meters underground for tens of thousands of years, allowing its radioactivity to diminish over time.

Nuclear power plants in Japan, operating without a designated final dump site for waste, are often criticized for being like “a condominium building without a toilet.”

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan, or NUMO, responsible for managing final disposal, began inviting municipalities to host surveys for potential dump sites in 2002. To date, however, no location has been selected.

The research process for selecting a final repository site consists of three stages: a literature survey, a drilling survey, and a detailed investigation using an underground facility. Local governments that host such surveys receive subsidies from the central government.

Literature surveys, which involve reviewing geological maps and historical earthquake records, began in the town of Suttsu and the village of Kamoenai in Hokkaido in 2020, and in the town of Genkai, Saga Prefecture, in 2024. No other municipality has agreed to participate in site selection research, however.

The first-stage surveys concluded that all of Suttsu and most of Kamoenai are suitable for moving forward to the drilling survey phase. NUMO plans to release a report as early as this fall and hold briefing sessions for local residents.

Still, Hokkaido Gov. Naomichi Suzuki has expressed opposition to the drilling surveys, and Saga Gov. Yoshinori Yamaguchi has also voiced objections to conducting such a survey in Genkai. The consent of the prefectural governor is required to proceed with second-stage surveys.

The central government has emphasized its responsibility in its basic policies on the final disposal of nuclear waste and aims to conduct surveys in about 10 additional locations, following international precedents.

In the past, the town of Toyo in Kochi Prefecture and the city of Tsushima in Nagasaki Prefecture considered hosting surveys but ultimately declined. Central government representatives now plan to visit over 100 local governments, increasing opportunities to explain the process to residents.

Japan, which has relied on nuclear power for over half a century, currently holds around 19,000 tons of spent fuel at its nuclear power plants and other facilities, using about 80% of its total storage capacity.

As a resource-scarce nation, Japan has been promoting a nuclear fuel cycle, by which spent fuel is reprocessed and recycled for continued use in power generation. The reprocessing plant that is key to this cycle has yet to be completed, however.

Japan Nuclear Fuel started construction of the country’s first commercial reprocessing facility in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, in 1993, but its completion has been delayed 27 times.

In September, an interim storage facility in the city of Mutsu, Aomori Prefecture, took delivery of the first batch of spent fuel from Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings’ Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture. This facility, not on the premises of any nuclear power plant site, will store the fuel for up to 50 years before it undergoes reprocessing.

Many local residents see the receipt of spent fuel as premature, given the unfinished reprocessing plant and the lack of a final disposal solution. They worry that storage at the facility may become permanent rather than temporary.

The central government has decided to rebuild nuclear power plants and extend their operational periods. This marks a reversal of the previous policy, which aimed to reduce reliance on nuclear energy following the March 2011 accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima No. 1 plant, caused by severe damage from the earthquake and tsunami the same month.

An official from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said that “as we have used nuclear power plants, we cannot avoid” the issue of final nuclear waste disposal.

Hideki Masui, president of Japan Atomic Industry Forum, emphasized the need for “a national debate” as Japan struggles to conduct surveys in additional areas for potential disposal sites, placing disproportionate burdens on certain regions.