I have blogged extensively about the problems of permanent disposal of nuclear waste in the United States. The U.S. is not the only nation that has no permanent nuclear waste disposal facility. Many other nations are struggling with the question of where they can safely store the nuclear waste being generated by nuclear power reactors . Today I am going to talk about Japan.
Most of the recent press about Japan's nuclear program have been focused on the disaster and cleanup at Fukushima. All of the fifty Japanese power reactors were shut down following the disaster in March of 2011. Only two have been restarted as questions of the safety of the remaining nuclear power reactors are carefully reviewed.
The Tokai nuclear power plant in Ibaraki Prefecture began operating in 1966. It was the first commercial power reactor in Japan. The Tokai reactor has reached the end of its lifespan and was slated for decommissioning in 2006. The cost of the process was estimated to be about nine hundred million U.S. dollars. It was to begin in 2011 and take six years. The only problem is that there is no place to dispose of the sixteen hundred tons of low level waste that must be buried one hundred fifty to three hundred feet below ground to be safe. It is now 2013 and work on decommissioning has not started yet.
The Japanese government is considering a disposal site in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture where a uranium reprocessing plant is being built by Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd, (JNFL) a consortium of Japanese power utilities. It is the intent of the Japanese government to reprocess all spent nuclear fuel in the Rokkasho plant to obtain additional fuel and reduce the radioactivity of the remaining waste. However, there have been problems and accidents that have delayed the completion of the Rokkasho uranium reprocessing facility.
JNFL started research in 2002 on disposal of nuclear waste from decommissioning. They built a test facility about three hundred feet underground at the Rokkasho site. Their research on storage was eventually turned over to the Radioactive Waste Management Funding and Research Center which is affiliated with the nuclear industry in Japan. Unfortunately, the authorities of the village of Rokkasho and the Aomori Prefecture have stated that they have no intention of accepting any new nuclear waste at the JNFL site.
The Japanese government has estimated that over fifty thousand tons of nuclear waste will be generated by decommissioning by 2030. The Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority has not set standards for permanent disposal of nuclear wastes and the Japanese government has not yet selected a site for a permanent geological repository for nuclear waste disposal. The national government put out a call in 2002 for any municipality that would accept a permanent nuclear waste disposal facility. Only one city answer the request but soon withdrew its willingness to accept such a facility.
As in the United States, the spent fuel pools in Japan are rapidly filling up and many will be filled completely within a few years. There are calls for the creation of interim nuclear waste storage onsite at nuclear power plants. The municipalities near the nuclear power plants have expressed their reluctance to see such interim facilities built.
The nuclear waste situation is part of the heated debate over the future of nuclear power in Japan. Prime Minister Abe is pushing to restart all the reactors and to export Japanese nuclear technology to other countries. In fact, Japan has offered to dispose of nuclear waste generated by nuclear reactors that Japan builds in developing nations. This push is countered by former Prime Minister Koizumi who is calling for a permanent shut down of all nuclear plants because of the accident at Fukushima and the lack of permanent nuclear waste disposal in Japan. He is also against making nuclear technology exports a major part of future Japanese economic growth.
Rokkasho uranium reprocessing plant:
