Kaminoseki, a town in the south-west, said it would accept the offer of a study by Chugoku Electric Power Co., one of two large electric service operators along with Kansai Electric Power Co., whose repositories for spent nuclear fuel are nearly full.
The Japanese government promotes nuclear power plants as a low-carbon energy source, but the storage capacity of the country’s nuclear plants is running out.
The problem stems from the nuclear recycling program to reprocess plutonium from spent fuel, which has been halted. The government persists in implementing the program, which, however, has suffered serious technical setbacks. The Monju plutonium reactor has failed and is being decommissioned, and the launch of the Rokkasho reprocessing plant in the north has been delayed by almost 30 years.
After the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in 2011, many reactors were taken out of service and their restart was delayed, allowing for delayed accumulation of spent fuel.
But when the government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida decided to maximize nuclear power as a clean source, concerns over the lack of deposits were raised again.
Chugoku’s plan to build a nuclear plant in Kaminoseki has been on hold for more than a decade since the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, delaying subsidies to the remote town whose population is aging and shrinking.
“The population will become poorer if we continue to wait,” Kaminoseki Mayor Tetsuo Nishi said at a TV news conference. “We must do everything that is available now.”
Kansai, Japan’s largest operator of nuclear plants, is urgently seeking a repository for spent fuel. The cooling reservoirs at your plants are more than 80% full. The company has committed to getting an interim site before the end of the year.
There are some 19,000 tons of spent fuel, a by-product of nuclear power generation, occupying 80% of the country’s storage capacity, according to the economy and industry ministry.
FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
