Japan « nuclear-news

Enormous costs of shutting down Japan’s nuclear facilities

Costs for scrapping 79 nuclear facilities estimated at 1.9 tril. yen https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20181227/p2g/00m/0na/001000c

December 27, 2018 (Mainichi Japan) TOKYO (Kyodo) — The state-backed Japan Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday it would need to spend about 1.9 trillion yen ($17.1 billion) to close 79 facilities over 70 years, in its first such estimate.

The total costs could increase further, as the agency said the estimated figure, which would be shouldered by taxpayers, excludes expenses for maintenance and replacing aging equipment.

The JAEA plans to close more than half of the 79 facilities over the next 10 years due in part to the increased costs to operate them under stricter safety rules introduced after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis. The agency, which has led nuclear energy research in Japan with its predecessors since the 1950s, owns a total of 89 facilities.

Of the estimated costs, the expense for closing the nation’s first spent-fuel reprocessing plant in the village of Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, accounts for the largest chunk of 770 billion yen. It will cost 150 billion yen to decommission the trouble-plagued Monju prototype fast-breeder nuclear reactor.

As for nuclear waste, the agency said about 100 kiloliters of high-level radioactive waste and up to 114,000 kl of low-level radioactive waste were estimated to have been produced but it has yet to decide on disposal locations.

The Japanese government aims to restart nuclear power plants after a nationwide halt following the nuclear crisis, despite persistent concern over the safety of atomic power generation.

December 27, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | decommission reactor, Japan, politics | Leave a comment

Top court orders TEPCO to pay compensation for voluntary evacuation from Fukushima

December 18, 2018 (Mainichi Japan) TOKYO — The Supreme Court on Dec. 13 upheld the lower court ruling ordering Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) to pay about 16 million yen in compensation to a man in his 40s and his family that voluntarily evacuated Fukushima Prefecture to western Japan after the 2011 nuclear disaster.

The top court’s First Petty Bench confirmed an Osaka High Court ruling handed down in October 2017 that recognized the man had developed depression due to the disaster and became unable to work. It marked the first time that a ruling awarding compensation to voluntary evacuees from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station disaster has been finalized by the top court, according to a legal team for victims of the nuclear crisis. ….. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20181218/p2a/00m/0na/021000c

December 24, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, legal | Leave a comment

Sun setting on Japan’s nuclear export sector

December 16, 2018

Post-Fukushima cost overruns may kill a giant power project in Turkey, and there are few other deals to replace it

Japan’s nuclear export industry could be dealt a fatal blow if Mitsubishi Heavy Industries pulls out of a massive project to build four large power plants on Turkey’s Black Sea coast, as reports have suggested.

The Sinop plant project in Turkey was seen as Japan’s best chance for an industry – battered and bruised after the 2011 tsunami and triple meltdown at Fukushima – to put together a workable export strategy that did not break the bank of potential international customers.

Aside from Sinop, the Japanese industry has only one viable export project still upcoming: Hitachi’s bid to build two reactors on the island of Anglesey in Britain. And even that deal is looking shaky.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has not pulled the plug yet on its stake in the four-reactor project on Turkey’s Black Sea coast, but a slew of domestic media reports and talk in Tokyo, suggests that, in the face of seemingly ever-rising construction costs to meet new safety standards that have been put in place since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, the company will bail.

Fukushima legacy

When the deal was signed with Ankara in 2013, the ownership profile was: 65% awarded to a consortium made up of MHI, Itochu, France’s Areva, and GDF Suez. The other 35% was covered by Turkey’s electric power utility, Elektrik Uretim.

However, in April, Itochu pulled out of the consortium, citing cost overruns. That left the consortium with 51%, and the remaining 49% owned by the Turkish utility.

Without Mitsubishi the viability of the project is in question, sources say, unless Turkey can find a new partner or is willing to take on the project without its largest foreign partner. The Russians, who are building a nuclear complex on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast, might be interested.

According to Kyodo, a thorough cost evaluation was to be completed by the end of this year. Itochu waited for the report to be released before bailing out of the deal. MHI is apparently waiting for the study to be completed before deciding its next move.

When the deal with Mitsubishi was signed in 2013, the estimated cost was $18 billion for four 1,100-megawatt nuclear power plants. But overall costs have soared, passing $42 billion in April – when Itochu withdrew, and is now put at about $44 billion.

Cost increases are nothing new in the nuclear power industry, but have been exacerbated in recent years by expensive adjustments phased in to meet more stringent safety concerns following the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed four units of the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The Sinop cost rises, however, also encompass other problems encountered in construction.

Fukushima, one of the most serious nuclear accidents in history, turned most of Japan against nuclear power. Before March 11, 2011, Japan had 54 nuclear plants. All were shut down after the accident and some are slowly returning to service having passed scrutiny by the regulator. Five are expected to restart within the next five years, and eight will likely be decommissioned. But prospects for the remaining plants are unclear.

Aware that no new nuclear plant may ever be built at home amid the anti-atomic public mood, Japan’s nuclear vendors have turned to overseas exports as the Fukushima accident does not appear to have destroyed the Japanese industry brand in other countries.

Endgame for nuclear exports?

If Mitsubishi does pull out of the huge project in Turkey it will be a blow to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who sees international exports of nuclear technology as an important way to boost the economy. On his many trips abroad, he often acts as a salesman for nuclear exports. For example, it was a topic of discussion with Turkish President Recep Erdogan on the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Argentina.

Details of the conversation were not revealed, but it would be a good bet that they discussed the Sinop project with the threat of Mitsubishi hanging over them, and that Abe sought ways to keep the project viable.

Meanwhile, it is not just MHI that may have doubts about the sector. Japan’s nuclear export industry has suffered plenty of setbacks in the seven years since Fukushima. Questions about the future of the sector hang over all three main players in the sector.

Toshiba, one of Japan’s big-three nuclear constructors, recently pulled out of the nuclear power business overseas after incurring huge losses in the United States.

Toshiba has also suffered something of an administrative meltdown in its quest to win construction contracts in the US. In February it finally unloaded it money-losing American subsidiary, Westinghouse, for $1 billion less than it paid to acquire the company 10 years ago.

If the export program is to remain viable, it may be in Wales, where the British government is seeking to build a two-reactor nuclear power plant on the island of Anglesey. Among those bidding for the project is Japan’s third nuclear constructor, Hitachi, through a subsidiary called Horizon Nuclear.

In the nuclear world, there are constructors – like MHI, Toshiba and Hitachi – and operators, who run the plant after it is completed, and they are not always the same. Japan learned from Korea’s successful bid to build six nuclear plants in the United Arab Emirates that offering to build and also run them – a one-stop service – is key to making sales.

Hitachi is teaming up with the Japan Atomic Power Company, which operates two plants in Japan (although both are currently shut down pending the review by regulators). The plan is to present the British with a package deal.

Now, there are worries that Hitachi might pull out of the British project. Chairman Hiroaka Nakanishi was quoted in the Times of London saying his company was “facing an extreme situation,” and that a final decision on whether to stay with the project or leave it will be made next year.

If Mitsubishi does, as is widely expected, pull out of the huge project in Turkey, the only egg left in Japan’s overseas nuclear export basket will be Wales.

http://www.atimes.com/article/sun-setting-on-japans-nuclear-export-sector/

December 20, 2018 Posted by dunrenard | Japan | Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Nuclear Exports, Toshiba | Leave a comment

Japan’s Move to amend nuclear damage law will push the burden of risk on citizens: CNIC

December 8, 2018

An important statement by Tokyo-based Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center(CNIC).

On November 2, a bill for the partial amendment of the Compensation for Nuclear Damage Act (hereafter, CND) was submitted to the Diet.

In the first place, this CND amendment is based on supplementary regulations demanding “a drastic review including an amendment of CND at the earliest possible date” and “necessary measures from the viewpoint of minimizing the burden on the people of the nation” when the Nuclear Damage Compensation Facilitation Corporation Act was deliberated in the Diet in 2011. Further, both houses of the Diet limited “at the earliest possible date” to “around a year” and determined, by supplementary decisions attached to that act, that “deliberations to clarify the nature of liability in Article 3 of CND and the nature of the government’s liability including the nature of compensatory payments in Article 7 of CND” should also be carried out. In 2015, however, a specialist committee on the nuclear compensation system was set up within the Atomic Energy Commission, and even after serious deliberations had begun progress was extremely slow. It was not until October 30, 2018 that a final draft was approved.

The main points of the draft amendment are: 1) Nuclear power plant (NPP) operators are mandated to prepare and publish a new damage compensation implementation policy, 2) Creation of a system for the government to lend funds to the operator for early compensation (provisional payments) to affected persons before the start of the main compensation payments, 3) In the case that alternative dispute resolution (ADR) by the Nuclear Damage Dispute Reconciliation Committee is terminated, it will be deemed that an appeal has been submitted at the time of the request for settlement mediation if the appeal is brought before the court within one month after the notification of termination of ADR, and 4) The compensatory fund is to be left unchanged at 120 billion yen.

It is surprising that 1) is not already being carried out by NPP operators. At the time of the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident the government had already devised measures similar to 2) for provisional compensation in the Act on Emergency Measures for Damage due to Nuclear Accidents. 3) can be said to be rational since there has been a series of cases in which the nuclear business side has rejected settlement proposals. On the other hand, the content of 4) is strikingly problematic since it does nothing to adjust the astoundingly miserly current compensatory fund of 120 billion yen in the face of the estimated 22 trillion yen in damages for the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.

Originally, CND began as an exemption of makers from liability due to nuclear accidents in order to encourage the construction of nuclear power plants. The discussions in the latest series of reviews have progressed with no mention of this point, but in fact we believe the specialist committee should have taken one step further and questioned the liability of nuclear reactor makers.

Looking back on the deliberations for the Nuclear Damage Compensation Facilitation Corporation Act, where the argument began, it can be seen that there was a shared understanding that the compensatory fund of 120 billion yen was inadequate. Even in the specialist committee, there was general agreement among the committee members on the point that the amount of the compensatory fund should be raised. At the same time, the executive director of the Japan Atomic Energy Insurance Pool (JAEIP), committee member Tetsuro Kihara, stated at the fifth committee meeting, “A five or ten trillion level is simply impossible…. but the idea of lifting the current 120 billion yen to a level of 150 or 200 billion yen is a different question.” While making this statement, which appears to suggest that there is a margin for raising the level of the compensatory fund, he made an about-face at the 17th meeting by denying that there was any margin for raising the amount of the fund by stating, “The conclusion is that, as far as the insurance industry is concerned, it would be extremely difficult to raise the fund above 120 billion yen.” The nuclear business operators themselves also opposed a raise.

However, it is quite clear, firstly, that it is impossible for JAEIP to hold a mammoth sum of 22 trillion yen in insurance money. If so, while considering raising the amount of the compensatory fund, and to minimize the burden on the people of the nation, rather than maintain the compensation scheme with the premise of allowing the nuclear business operators to continue to exist, based on the Act on the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation, it should have been necessary to devise a new compensation scheme based on the 22 trillion yen in damages arising from the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that did not necessarily insist on the continued existence of the nuclear business operator. With the specialist committee unable to get a grasp on this problem, we are left with the unavoidable question of what on earth the committee, and the Atomic Energy Commission which led it, had been doing for three years, after which they simply threw the ball back at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).

In the meantime, on October 25, just before the conclusion was reached, MEXT, under whose jurisdiction CND lies, stated at a Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology section meeting that it had accepted the CND amendment. This constitutes an extremely grave problem from the viewpoint of procedure. Why should MEXT be going to an LDP section meeting to give explanations without having received the conclusion of the specialist committee? It is impossible for both MEXT and the specialist committee to avoid censure for their disrespect for deliberations.

CND is directly linked with the problem of the interests of citizens regarding how nuclear energy risks are distributed under the unlimited liability of nuclear business operators. If NPPs are to be operated on just a very small burden, the risk of “cheap NPPs” is essentially borne by the citizens. The bill for the amendment utterly fails to resolve this problem and would allow NPPs to be operated with the citizenry, as ever, bearing the huge risk involved. Implementing deregulation of the power industry while accepting that it is fine to push this enormous risk onto the citizens greatly alleviates the burden on nuclear business operators and will lead to a serious deterioration in the competitive environment.

The U.S. Price–Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act concentrates liability for damage due to a nuclear accident on the operator regardless of whether the fault lies with the operator or not, and also established a system whereby a ceiling of 1.5 trillion yen is guaranteed through a mutual assistance system between operators. At the same time, the act also states (42 U.S. Code § 2210 (i) (2) (B)) that in the event of an amount exceeding this, funds from industrial circles and others will be considered. In the case of the U.S., the amount of damages in the Three Mile Island nuclear accident did not exceed the amount of the compensatory fund. In Japan, however, damages arising from the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, even by government estimates, will total roughly 22 trillion yen (including the cost of decommissioning). As provision against further accidents, the mutual assistance among the operators, based on the current Act on the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation, will be totally inadequate.

The current legal amendment began from a demand to consider the law from the viewpoint of minimizing the burden on the people of the nation. If so, while it is natural to maintain the unlimited liability, and based on the premise of the damage arising from the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, a mutual assistance system should be set up to include not only the operators but all those in nuclear power industry circles who have profited from the nuclear energy business thus far in sharing the burden. This is the duty that should be borne by the operators and nuclear power industry circles who have expanded a business that has the potential to cause the horrendous damage we have seen from just one accident. If they cannot do this because they believe the risk is too high, the only option is for the operators to withdraw from the nuclear power business.

http://www.dianuke.org/japans-move-to-amend-nuclear-damage-law-will-push-the-burden-of-risk-on-citizens-cnic/?fbclid=IwAR3hy-xr5E8-KBPpbZpSA7yW9vx3oCVemiLS-FDlGI9s4mh3bG8E0jJiF1g

December 20, 2018 Posted by dunrenard | Japan | CND, Compensation for Nuclear Damage Act | Leave a comment

Japan’s nuclear export industry about to get the fatal blow

Sun setting on Japan’s nuclear export sector http://www.atimes.com/article/sun-setting-on-japans-nuclear-export-sector/

Post-Fukushima cost overruns may kill a giant power project in Turkey, and there are few other deals to replace it

By TODD CROWELL DECEMBER 16, 2018 Japan’s nuclear export industry could be dealt a fatal blow if Mitsubishi Heavy Industries pulls out of a massive project to build four large power plants on Turkey’s Black Sea coast, as reports have suggested.

The Sinop plant project in Turkey was seen as Japan’s best chance for an industry – battered and bruised after the 2011 tsunami and triple meltdown at Fukushima – to put together a workable export strategy that did not break the bank of potential international customers.

Aside from Sinop, the Japanese industry has only one viable export project still upcoming: Hitachi’s bid to build two reactors on the island of Anglesey in Britain. And even that deal is looking shaky.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has not pulled the plug yet on its stake in the four-reactor project on Turkey’s Black Sea coast, but a slew of domestic media reports and talk in Tokyo, suggests that, in the face of seemingly ever-rising construction costs to meet new safety standards that have been put in place since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, the company will bail.

Fukushima legacy