Energy plan overlooked flat-out opposition to nuclear power, analysis showsAsahi Shimbun, November 12, 2014 By ATSUSHI KOMORI/ Senior Staff Writer The government’s compilation of its basic energy plan ignored an overwhelming call from the public to move away from nuclear energy, according to an analysis by The Asahi Shimbun.
More than 90 percent of the comments submitted to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in response to the government’s proposed plan were against nuclear power, the analysis showed.
Yet nuclear energy was described as an “important base-load electricity source” in the plan approved by the Abe Cabinet in April.
The Asahi received a total of 18,711 comments from the ministry after submitting an information disclosure request.
Among them, 17,665, or 94.4 percent of the total, expressed opposition to restarting operations at nuclear power plants or called for decommissioning them.
Only 213 comments, or 1.1 percent, were in favor of maintaining or further promoting nuclear energy……….
In 2012, when the Democratic Party of Japan held the reins of government, it called for a national debate on what rate of power generation nuclear energy should account for in 2030.
More than 2,800 evacuees from a village near the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are seeking state arbitration for a rise in compensation from Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant’s operator.
Iitate Village is still an evacuation zone three years and eight months after the nuclear accident at the power plant. But decontamination work is proceeding across the village, which is located about 40 kilometers from the plant.
About half the village’s population, or 2,837 evacuees, filed for arbitration with the Center for Settlement of Fukushima Nuclear Damage Claims on Friday.
They say their prolonged evacuation is splitting local communities and families and threatening generations of the village’s history.
The evacuees are seeking increased compensation and an apology from TEPCO. They want the current monthly evacuation compensation per capita more than tripled to 350,000 yen, or roughly 3,000 dollars per month. They also call for around 172,000 dollars per evacuee in compensation for ruining their village lives.
The representative of the evacuees, Kenichi Hasegawa, explained why they filed for the class-action arbitration. He said the evacuees decided they must express their anger as their lives have not improved since the nuclear accident. He added that the evacuees want their village lives back.
TEPCO said in a statement it has yet to learn the details of the documents. But the company pledges a sincere response to the arbitration in line with settlement procedures
The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant faces another challenge in its effort to address radioactive water at the complex.
It says highly contaminated water may still be flowing from reactor buildings into adjacent underground tunnels even after a work to stem the flow ended.
The water in the tunnels is believed to be leaking into the sea. Tokyo Electric Power Company plans to pump the tainted water out of the tunnels and fill them with cement.
To prepare for the process, the firm began work in April to stem the flow of radioactive water between the reactor buildings and the tunnels. It involved freezing some of the water as well as plugging the gaps with filler materials.
TEPCO finished the work on November 6th. But workers found that water levels in the reactor buildings and the tunnels are still linked. They note this suggests that the flow of radioactive water between them may not have been stopped.
TEPCO officials say that if the situation doesn’t improve, they may start filling the tunnels with cement even before they finish removing contaminated water.
A Greenpeace radiation monitoring team checks contamination in Fukushima City
13 Nov 2014
Tokyo, Japan – “Hot spots” of nuclear radiation still contaminate parts of Fukushima Prefecture, according to findings from the latest Greenpeace radiation monitoring mission near the Daiichi nuclear power plant that experienced a melt down after an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
Experts from the environmental organisation also claim that authorities have consistently underestimated the amount of contamination and the health risks involved.
Greenpeace will use these results to try to persuade local governments with nuclear power plants in their districts to resist lobbying from the central government to have them reactivated. All 50 of Japan’s remaining nuclear plants were shut down following the 2011 disaster.
Greenpeace began independently monitoring radiation in Fukushima within a few days of the nuclear accident, and it has conducted field trips each year since then. The latest such trip took place from October 24-27.
Heinz Smitai, a nuclear physicist, Greenpeace campaigner and participant in the radiation monitoring mission, told foreign journalists at an October 30 press conference in Tokyo that radiation hot spots exist as far as 60 kilometres from the site of the disaster.
For instance, one street in front of a hospital in Fukushima City “is quite contaminated”, Smitai said, measuring 1.1 microsieverts of radiation per hour. Although this was one of the highest readings, Greenpeace found 70 other places in the city where the amount of radiation recorded exceeded the Ministry of Environment’s long-term target of 0.23 microsieverts per hour.
A sievert is the standard unit for measuring the risk of radiation absorbed by the body. A millisievert is equal to one-thousandth of a sievert, while a microsievert is one-millionth of a sievert. A typical CT scan can deliver from 2 to 10 millisieverts of radiation, depending on the area being scanned.
Tanks storing contaminated water are seen at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant
in Fukushima Prefecture on Nov. 12.
November 13, 2014
OKUMA, Fukushima Prefecture–More than three years into the massive cleanup of Japan’s tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant, only a tiny fraction of the workers are focused on key tasks such as preparing for the dismantling of the broken reactors and removing radioactive fuel rods.
Instead, nearly all the workers at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant are devoted to an enormously distracting problem: a still-growing amount of contaminated water used to keep the damaged reactors from overheating. The amount has been swelled further by groundwater entering the reactor buildings.
Hundreds of huge blue and gray tanks to store the radioactive water, and buildings holding water treatment equipment are rapidly taking over the plant, where the cores of three reactors melted following a 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Workers were building more tanks during a visit to the complex on Nov. 12 by foreign media, including The Associated Press.
“The contaminated water is a most pressing issue that we must tackle. There is no doubt about that,” said Akira Ono, head of the plant. “Our effort to mitigate the problem is at its peak now. Though I cannot say exactly when, I hope things start getting better when the measures start taking effect.”
The numbers tell the story.
6,000 WORKERS
Every day, about 6,000 workers pass through the guarded gate of the Fukushima No. 1 plant on the Pacific coast–two to three times more than when it was actually producing electricity.
On a recent work day, about 100 workers were dismantling a makeshift roof over one of the reactor buildings, and about a dozen others were removing fuel rods from a cooling pool. Most of the rest were dealing with the contaminated water, said Tatsuhiro Yamagishi, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that owns the plant.
The work threatens to exhaust the supply of workers for other tasks, since employees must stop working when they reach annual radiation exposure limits. Experts say it is crucial to reduce the amount and radioactivity of the contaminated water to decrease the risk of exposure to workers and the environmental impact before the decommissioning work gets closer to the highly contaminated core areas.
40 YEARS
The plant has six reactors, three of which were offline when disaster struck on March 11, 2011. A magnitude-9.0 earthquake triggered a huge tsunami which swept into the plant and knocked out its backup power and cooling systems, leading to meltdowns at the three active reactors.
Decommissioning and dismantling all six reactors is a delicate, time-consuming process that includes removing the melted fuel from a highly radioactive environment, as well as all the extra fuel rods, which sit in cooling pools at the top of the reactor buildings. Workers must determine the exact condition of the melted fuel debris and develop remote-controlled and radiation-resistant robotics to deal with it.
Troubles and delays in preparatory stages, including the water problem and additional measures needed to address environmental and health concerns in removing highly radioactive debris from atop reactor buildings that exploded during meltdowns, have pushed back schedules on the decommissioning roadmap. Recently, officials said the government and TEPCO plan to delay the planned start of fuel removal from Units 1 and 2 by about 5 years.
The process of decommissioning the four reactors is expected to take at least 40 years.
500,000 TONS
The flow of underground water is doubling the amount of contaminated water and spreading it to vast areas of the compound.
Exposure to the radioactive fuel contaminates the water used to cool the melted fuel from inside, and much of it leaks and pours into the basements of the reactors and turbines, and into maintenance trenches that extend to the Pacific Ocean. Plans to freeze some of the most toxic water inside the trench near the reactors have been delayed for at least 8 months due to technical challenges.
The plant reuses some of the contaminated water for cooling after partially treating it, but the additional groundwater creates a huge excess that must be pumped out.
Currently, more than 500,000 tons of radioactive water is being stored in nearly 1,000 large tanks which now cover large areas of the sprawling plant. After a series of leaks last year, the tanks are being replaced with costlier welded ones.
That amount dwarfs the 9,000 tons of contaminated water produced during the 1979 partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in the United States. At Three Mile Island, it took 14 years for the water to evaporate, said Lake Barrett, a retired U.S. nuclear regulatory official who was part of the early mitigation team there and has visited the Fukushima plant.
“This is a much more complex, much more difficult water management problem,” Barrett said.
10 TRILLION YEN
An estimated 2 trillion yen ($18 billion) will be needed just for decontamination and other mitigation of the water problem. Altogether, the entire decommissioning process, including compensation for area residents, reportedly will cost about 10 trillion yen, or about $90 billion.
All this for a plant that will never produce a kilowatt of energy again.
About 500 workers are digging deep holes in preparation for a taxpayer-funded 32 billion yen ($290 million) underground “frozen wall” around four reactors and their turbine buildings to try to keep the contaminated water from seeping out.
TEPCO is developing systems to try to remove most radioactive elements from the water. One, known as ALPS, has been trouble-plagued, but utility officials hope to achieve its daily capacity of 2,000 tons when they enter full operation next month following a final inspection by regulators.
Officials hope to treat all contaminated water by the end of March, but that is far from certain.
Japanese doctors threatened for revealing data on how bad Fukushima-related illnesses have become — Gundersen: We had pregnant sisters in Tokyo deliver two dead babies and one with deformities that’s alive; Gov’t refuses to disclose miscarriages or stillbirths around Fukushima
Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds Energy Education: We have firsthand knowledge from at least a half dozen Japanese doctors… who have said they have been threatened… if they speak frankly to their patients about the health effects that they’re experiencing; or if they frankly speak in public about their fears — and, in fact, measurements — of how bad radioactive illnesses really are. So we know of at least a half a dozen doctors who are being ‘sat on’, and if 6 are, you can be certain that many more are as well. It’s a pressure that’s being applied up and down the spectrum… [You would now expect] exactly what we’re seeing — earlier cancers and thyroid nodules. Then over the next 15 to 20 years, increased organ cancers as well as muscular cancers… The fact of the matter is, we’re going to see cancers in that 4 to 30 year time span. And I still stand by what I’ve been saying now for 3 years. I think there will be a million extra cancers as a result of Fukushima Daiichi.
Gundersen: For Asahi Shimbun, a major newspaper, to basically call on people to [move] back home based on the [claim there’s no increase in birth defects]… is absolutely absurd. The number they’re not giving us is how many stillbirths and how many miscarriages there’s been in relation to the rest of Japan — and those are radiation-induced. You’ll get a stillbirth or you’ll get a miscarriage when a fetus is deformed or it is already developing cancer… The Japanese are not reporting stillbirths and miscarriages in Fukushima… That’s a much better indication… There are 35 million people in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area [and] their homes are contaminated… We had two women, sisters, both pregnant at the same time — one with twins, and one with a single baby. Two of the kids were stillbirths. The other was born with a deformity. They had the metallic taste in their mouth as the babies were in [the womb]. They lived in Tokyo, 130 miles from the accident. They’re people, they’re not statistics… and they’ve got no place to run…. no place to go.
Still 102,900 Bq/Kg of Cs-134/137 measured from Matsutake mushroom in Minamisoma city Iori Mochizuki Fukushima Diary, 9 Nov 14, According to Minamisoma city government, still extremely high level of Cs-134/137 is detected from agricultural products.
From their latest report of September, 102,900 Bq/Kg of Cs-134/137 was measured from Matsutake mushroom. The city government reports it was collected for self-consumption, but the ratio of Cs-134 and Cs-137 was not announced.
Also 28,240 Bq/Kg and 17,058 Bq/Kg were measured from other Matsutake mushroom samples.
2,094 ~ 14,140 Bq/Kg of Cs-134/137 were detected from “Inohana” mushroom as well.
Still high level of radioactive material is accumulated in mushroom in Minamisoma city.
Hundreds in Tokyo protest Japan’s decision to restart nuclear plant, ABC News 7 Nov 14 By North Asia correspondent Matthew Carney Hundreds have protested near the Japanese prime minister’s office in Tokyo against the decision to restart a nuclear plant.
The decision paves the way for a revival of the stalled nuclear industry more than three years after the Fukushima disaster.
Two reactors will restart at the Sendai nuclear plant, 1,000 kilometres south-west of Tokyo.
It represented a victory for Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who said the shutdown of the nuclear industry led to an over-reliance on imported and costly fossil fuels.
Local Rifts on Display in Japan’s Nuclear Restart Which communities are allowed to decide on reactivation is likely to be a long-term issue.The Diplomat By Clint Richards November 05, 2014 “………there is still wide debate across Japan as to what combination of local and prefectural governments should be consulted before restarts are granted, which are currently being done on a case by case basis. The two reactors located in the city of Satsuma-Sendai in Kagoshima prefecture provide a case study for how future restarts may play out, as the governments there are seeking to limit the influence of nearby municipalities.
In the lead up to this week’s events, Yoichi Miyazawa, the industry and trade minister who replaced Yuko Obuchi, visited the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on Saturday. Interestingly, Obuchi said shortly before she was forced to resign over a political scandal that “obtaining consent from local communitiesis not a legal requisite for a restart.” During Miyazawa’s visit, he praised the work of the facility’s employees in the cleanup effort and said it was vital that decommissioning remain on schedule……….
while the governor’s acceptance is key, it is not the only hurdle remaining. The local Satsuma-Sendai municipal assembly approved the restart on October 28, yet the prefectural assembly’s assent is also necessary. However, according to the Asahi Shimbun the votes may already be in hand. There will be assembly deliberations from November 5 to 7, with a plenary session also on the 7th. The Asahi reports that “a majority of the 51-member assembly will approve a petition supporting the resumption of operations of the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors,” with the ruling LDP commanding 35 seats, and several independents and coalition Komeito members expected to also vote in favor.
So while the necessary governmental authorities seem to be in line with the Sendai restart, the debate over exactly how many municipalities and prefectures should be involved in the process is still going strong……..The national government will likely continue to struggle to convince these communities of the benefits of restarting the country’s nuclear reactors. As the majority of voters live outside the communities that are directly allowed to decide on the issue, this is likely to be a long, uphill battle for the government in Tokyo.http://thediplomat.com/2014/11/local-rifts-on-display-in-japans-nuclear-restart/
Dr. Robert Metzger, Radiation Safety Engineering, Inc, American Chemical Society 2013 Meeting (emphasis added): Contamination of food imports to the United States in the early days after the Fukushima accident… Contaminated food imports into the US from Japan were first observed in our laboratory on March 30, 2011, withseveral products exceeding the FDA DerivedIntervention Level (DIL) for Cesium and Iodine…
First observed food… contamination was found on March 30… a Sushi import was found to be contaminated with 131I
April 5, a shipment of Koji powder was… heavily contaminated with 60Co, 124Sb, 131I, 132Te, 134Cs and 137Cs… This, and subsequent samples, exceeded the FDA [DIL]
By July, the 1-131 had largely decayed away and the primary concern was foods that were known concentrators of some of the isotopes. The sample of the dried green tea leaves below has Cesium concentrations at 1/3 of the FDA DIL [~400 Bq/kg]
By July, the impact of the water releases were observed in harvests of seaweed… The sample [tested] is about 1/3 of the FDA DIL for Cesium [~400 Bq/kg]
Published results indicate [FDA] found little to no observable contamination… There are several possible explanations… We were testing samples while the accident was still in progress and therefore saw problems before the FDA started testing seriously
Imported food products contaminated with fission products… were detected starting in late March… Conscientious importers tested their imported foods and destroyed any food that was found to be contaminated, even at levels well below the FDA DIL
FDA, May 3, 2011: FDA has not detected any longer‐lived radionuclides, such as Cs‐137, in any fish imported from Japan… FDA is performing field examinations… on approximately 40% of the seafood products… shipped to [US]… March 21, 2011 to April 25, 2011, 3,496 examinations were performed. To date, no field examinations have shown levels above background. FDA is also randomly sampling selected entries and subjecting them to laboratory analysis. To date, no gamma‐ray emitting radionuclides of concern have been detected.
FDA, Mar. 2014: FDA has no evidence [of Fukushima] radionuclides… in the US food supply at levels that would pose a public health concern… FDA has tested 1,345 [samples]… two were found to contain detectable levels of Cesium, but… posed no public health concern… 1) Ginger Powder… collected April 2011; 2) Green Tea Bag… collected August 2013… During this time, routine monitoring of the domestic US food supply was also conducted and included roughly 1,500 samples… No contamination was detected during this routine monitoring.
According to an Oct. 30 CBS interview with a professor involved with UC Berkeley-affiliated Kelp Watch: “There’s never zero risk” to someone exposed to radioactive material no matter the level.
Japan’s nuclear watchdog disputed the farm ministry’s assertion that radioactive substances churned up by debris removal work at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant contaminated distant rice paddies last year.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority announced at a commissioners’ meeting Oct. 31 its estimate that 110 billion becquerels of radioactive materials spread as a result of cleanup at the No. 3 reactor building on Aug. 19, 2013.
This figure is lower than the 130 billion to 260 billion becquerels estimated by the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., in August.
Radiation readings rose significantly during debris removal that day, with radioactive substances found to have contaminated plant workers about 500 meters from the reactor building.
However, NRA Commissioner Toyoshi Fuketa emphasized, “The affected area of the fallout was within the nuclear plant compound.”
“While it is difficult to simulate the spread of radioactive substances (outside the plant), it is unlikely that the debris cleanup caused the contamination (of the rice paddies),” Fuketa said.
The nuclear facility was ravaged by the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and ensuing tsunami, triggering a triple meltdown.
The NRA arrived at the figure of 110 billion becquerels by analyzing radiation levels recorded at monitoring posts north-northwest of the plant on the day in question.
Radioactive fallout on this scale constitutes a Level 0 incident on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale.
Earlier, the farm ministry pointed to the possibility that radiation from the plant had spread to rice paddies in Minami-Soma more than 20 kilometers away, and called on TEPCO to take preventive measures in its debris removal work.
During the NRA meeting, some experts noted that despite the NRA’s estimate, it is unlikely that factors other than debris cleanup at the plant could have caused such high levels of radioactive fallout at the rice farms.
“From a broader perspective, the Fukushima No. 1 plant is responsible for the contamination,” one participant said.
A panel is lifted by crane at the No. 1 reactor building of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant
in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, on Oct. 31
November 01, 2014
OKUMA, Fukushima Prefecture–Tokyo Electric Power Co. has removed part of the canopy above a reactor building at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to gauge the effects of anti-scattering agents pumped inside.
It was the first time in three years that debris inside the No. 1 reactor building was visible from the outside. The structure, which was destroyed in a hydrogen explosion a day after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, was covered with the canopy in October of that year.
The removal on Oct. 31 of one of six panels that make up the canopy is the initial stage in work to remove debris and nuclear fuel from inside the structure.
TEPCO drilled holes into the panel, which measures 42 meters by 7 meters and weighs 32 tons, on Oct. 22. It then sprayed anti-scattering resin inside to prevent radioactive substances from stirring up into the air.
The panel was removed to survey the effects of the resin.
The work was performed by a large crane that slowly hoisted the panel and lowered it to the ground, taking about one hour and 40 minutes.
The panel is scheduled to be returned by the end of November. TEPCO plans to start dismantling the entire canopy on a full-fledged basis in March 2015.
Oct 31 (Reuters) – The governor of Kagoshima prefecture, home to Kyushu Electric Power Co’s Sendai plant, said restarting the nuclear facility was in its “final stage” in a positive sign for the industry, as the trade minister reiterated support for reviving idled reactors.
All 48 of Japan’s nuclear reactors remain offline more than three years after an earthquake and tsunami set off meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government is pushing to restart reactors that meet new regulatory guidelines.
Kyushu Electric’s two-reactor Sendai plant, located 1,000 km (600 miles) southwest of Tokyo in Satsumasendai, was the first to pass the independent regulator’s safety guidelines last month.
“We are in the final stage on the issue of the Sendai plant’s restart,” said Kagoshima governor Yuichiro Ito during a meeting with newly appointed trade minister Yoichi Miyazawa on Friday.
Japan has said it would defer to local authorities to approve any restart.
The city assembly of Satsumasendai voted in favour of restarting the plant this week and Kagoshima’s prefectural assembly is expected to vote to finalise the restart next Friday, local politicians say.
Only eight lawmakers out of 49 state assemblymen are opposed to restarting the plant.
Ito did not give a timeline for a possible restart of the plant, but any return to operations is seen as unlikely until next year.
Miyazawa, who was appointed to head the powerful trade ministry after the sudden resignation of his predecessor over a political funds scandal, said he planned to tour the nuclear plant and talk to local politicians in Kagoshima next Monday, Nov. 3.
The government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) announced on Oct. 30 that removal of melted fuel from the No. 1 reactor at the disaster-hit Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant would be delayed by five years, until fiscal 2025.
They also announced that work to remove spent fuel from a cooling pool will not begin until fiscal 2019, two years later than originally planned. The delays are the result of the removal of debris and the installation of cranes taking longer than expected.
The announcement marks the first delays in the decommissioning schedule. TEPCO said, however, that the move would not result in an overall delay to the decommissioning process, which is expected to take 30 to 40 years.
The No. 1 reactor houses 392 fuel rods in its cooling pool, while melted fuel remains in the nuclear pressure vessel and reactor containment vessel. In a meeting on Oct. 30, the government and TEPCO decided to adopt a two-step process with separate measures to remove fuel from the cooling pool and melted fuel. First, a cover will be installed on the top floor of the reactor building. After a special crane for the fuel pool removes fuel, then workers will use a container and crane setup to remove melted fuel. The government and TEPCO say that they chose this method because there are many unknown factors in the removal of melted nuclear fuel, and because they hope to remove the fuel from the cooling pool at an early stage.
At the No. 1 reactor, preparations began this month to remove a cover designed to prevent the spread of radioactive materials, so that debris could be removed from the top floor. This process itself was delayed by six months. Because of this, and the fact that the two-step process is laborious, it is believed the government and TEPCO decided to delay the start of fuel removal work.
At the No. 2 reactor, meanwhile, since radiation levels are high and decontamination of the reactor building is difficult, officials have decided to reconsider the method of removing nuclear fuel. Officials are set to decide on a method in fiscal 2016, but there is a high possibility that removal work will fall behind schedule.
In August, work at the No. 3 reactor was suspended after a large piece of debris fell into the cooling pool while debris was being removed from around the pool’s edge. Officials plan to remove fuel from the pool next fiscal year, but the outlook for this work is unclear.
It is expected that work to remove fuel from the No. 4 reactor pool will be completed this year.
The decommissioning schedule was established under the Democratic Party of Japan-led administration in December 2011. It was revised in June last year, accelerating the removal of melted fuel by up to a year and a half.
The disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, triggered by the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, resulted in core meltdowns at reactor Nos. 1-3. Nuclear fuel has passed through the reactor pressure vessels, and caused damage to the containment vessels. The government and TEPCO plan to fill the containment vessels with water and remove about 450 metric tons of melted fuel. But it remains unknown where the melted fuel actually lies. Furthermore, officials have located only two damaged areas in the containment vessels of the three reactors.
In the Three Mile Island meltdown in the United States, it took six years before the removal of melted fuel was begun, though the pressure vessel was not damaged. Fukushima presents conditions that are far more difficult, and it is unclear when the work can be completed.
TheRokkashoproject (the nuclearwaste treatment plantin Japan)postponedforthe 21thtime!
Too many risks…Will Japanfinallytake the onlyright decision: to never restartreactors?
To give up theRokkashocouldjust lead them to do that…
October 31, 2014
AOMORI–Complications in safety screening have led to the 21st postponement of work to complete a key nuclear processing facility in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture.
The latest delay, announced Oct. 30 by Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd., the operator of the Rokkasho reprocessing plant, could affect future operations at nuclear plants across the country.
“This is the only facility (to process spent nuclear fuel in Japan),” Japan Nuclear Fuel President Kenji Kudo said at a news conference here. “We are doing our best.”
Under the government’s plans, the Rokkasho plant will recycle plutonium in spent nuclear fuel generated at nuclear power plants across the nation, helping to reduce the amount of radioactive waste accumulating in storage pools at the plants.
In January, Japan Nuclear Fuel applied to the Nuclear Regulation Authority for a safety inspection–a precondition to proceed with the construction of the facility.
The company expected the safety screening to end around June and planned to complete work on the processing facility by the end of October.
But discussions for the inspections only started in September because of the risk factors unique to the Rokkasho plant, such as complex piping between buildings and the huge amount of high-level liquid radioactive materials stored there.
In addition, the reprocessing plant came under stricter NRA safety standards after the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami triggered the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The extra time needed for the safety screening led to the decision by Japan Nuclear Fuel to postpone the completion date to March 2016.
The facility was originally scheduled to be finished in 1997. Just a year ago, Japan Nuclear Fuel announced its 20th postponement.
Under the latest schedule, Japan Nuclear Fuel plans to pass the NRA screening by June next year and complete construction in the following nine months.
But approval from the nuclear industry watchdog is not guaranteed.
“It is not clear at all how things will work out for the processing plant,” an NRA official said.
Currently, all nuclear reactors in Japan are offline, and electric power companies have applied for NRA screenings to restart their reactors.
With the continued delays at the Rokkasho facility, its storage pools have filled to near capacity with spent fuel brought from nuclear power plants throughout Japan.
Even if the electric power companies can restart their nuclear reactors, they could be forced to shut them down if the Rokkasho plant cannot accept additional nuclear fuel and their own storage pools become filled.
Under the planned fuel recycling program, plutonium and uranium in spent fuel will be removed through chemical processing at the Rokkasho plant. Processed high-level radioactive substances will be stored on the site after being encased in glass.
Read the Public Inquiry Report, the Commissioners’ report, Surrendering Australia: The AUKUS Deception is available to download for free at aukuspublicinquiry.com. Or just watch the replay of the National Press Club Luncheon.
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
