Japan Faces Tough Road Ahead over N-Fuel Reprocessing Plant

Tokyo, May 9 (Jiji Press)–Japan still faces a tough road ahead over the construction of a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori Prefecture, whose completion date has been moved back 27 times. With less than a year to go until the current deadline at the end of next March, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. is in time-consuming exchanges with the Nuclear Regulation Authority over the plant. The completion “will definitely be delayed” again, Aomori Governor Soichiro Miyashita has said. Meanwhile, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara has said that the deadline remains unchanged. Japan Nuclear Fuel began the construction of the plant, a key component of the country’s nuclear energy policy, in the village of Rokkasho in the northeastern prefecture in 1993, originally planning to complete it in 1997. Delays primarily stemmed from a series of problems, including those with some equipment, before northeastern Japan was struck by the March 2011 huge earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent nuclear accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 power plant. After the triple disaster, Japan significantly tightened nuclear safety standards. The NRA’s lengthy regulatory review to ensure the Rokkasho plant’s compliance with the standards led to delays in recent years. The regulatory watchdog finished examining the plant’s basic design in 2020 and then started a detailed design review, which is still going on. When Japan Nuclear Fuel announced its 27th postponement in summer 2024, it said it would complete its explanations to the NRA by November 2025 and win the body’s approval by March this year, but these have not progressed as scheduled. Japan Nuclear Fuel President Naohiro Masuda said that “there was a gap” between what the company believed it needed to explain to the NRA and what the regulatory side wanted to know. In response, the company has developed an overall plan to enhance its operations linked to the screening process. The overall plan shows details of scheduled items and the company’s explanations so that the two sides can easily share their understanding of construction progress. Of some 700 items set to be explained, only 26 remained unfinished as of the end of last month. The company expects to finish this process by June. Japan Nuclear Fuel believes it can recover the delay of about six months by improving efficiency and using optional extra days set in preparation for contingency. “While the screening is in its final stage, it will take some time,” NRA Chairman Shinsuke Yamanaka has said, however. Concerns also persist regarding the plant’s melting furnace used to vitrify high-level radioactive waste arising from the reprocessing process. Test operations that began in 2006 were halted for about three and a half years due to problems with the furnace. In December last year, Japan Nuclear Fuel said that it will postpone confirming the furnace’s performance until after the completion of the plant. But it is uncertain whether the NRA will approve the postponement. “We can say the plant is completed only after confirming that the melting furnace works properly,” a prefectural assembly member said. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]