Nuclear Waste Remains

Kansai Electric Power Company made a roadmap dealing with used nuclear fuels produced by its nuclear power plants and submitted to Fukui prefectural government. While KEPCO promised that it would decide by the end of 2023 where the intermediate storage facility of nuclear waste would be built outside of Fukui prefecture, the roadmap proposes establishing a dry-type of storage facility inside nuclear power plant site. The governor of Fukui, Tatsuji Sugimoto, is basically willing to accept KEPCO’s plan. 

The president of KEPCO, Takashi Morimoto, promised the governor of Fukui in February 2021 that KEPCO would stop the operation of the third reactor in Mihama plant and the first and second reactors in Takahama plant if the company cannot determine where the waste goes. Those three reactors are working beyond the limit of forty years old. Although the forty-year regulation was set after the accident in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, the limit was extended by new laws legislated by Kishida administration.

 

Expecting completion of the reprocessing factory in Rokkasho, Aomori, by the first half of 2024, the roadmap of KEPCO says it will start moving the nuclear waste to Rokkasho factory in 2026. Rokkasho factory should have completed in 1997 in the original plan. But it was delayed by consecutive technological troubles and there is no guarantee for the factory when it will start its operation.

 

The roadmap also hopes to start exporting a part of accumulated waste to France in 2027. And, it considers introducing “dry-type” of storage facility inside the nuclear power plant site. There have been studies on the technology of dry cask storage in Japan for years, which does not require storage pools for keeping used nuclear fuels. KEPCO explains that the dry-type of storage facility would contribute to smooth carrying out of the nuclear waste and safe storage without electricity until the waste would be taken to the intermediate storage facilities expected to be built in somewhere sometime.

 

If the nuclear waste is remaining in the plants in Fukui after the end of this year, the promise of KEPCO to remove the waste will not be implemented. Nevertheless, Governor Sugimoto is accepting the plan of KEPCO, because he recognizes that the promise has been implemented by sending some of the waste to France. He explained to Fukui Prefectural Assembly that he saw some progress in the roadmap.

 

Nuclear waste in Japan is going nowhere. Contaminated soil of Fukushima, for example, is accumulated on the intermediate storage yard in the towns of Okuma and Futaba where crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant exists. Even though the government of Japan promised that it would find final destination of the soil within thirty years, no place has been determined for that. It is inevitable that the people in Fukui are worried about building the dry-type of storage as long as alternative place for final processing of used nuclear fuel is not found.

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