Critics raise doubts about Japan's need for fast-breeder nuclear reactors
By Satoshi Toi, Kyodo News International, Tokyo Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Masatoshi Toyoda, former vice president of Tokyo Electric Power Co. a former adviser to Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd., is one of those raising doubts about the government's plan to develop fast-breeder nuclear reactors.
It was in 1967 that the government's Atomic Energy Commission made its
reprocessing policy clear, saying, "Our country, with a shortage of
resources, must try to establish a nuclear fuel reprocessing setup for stable
supplies and efficient use of nuclear fuel."
Thus, the building of fast-breeder reactors became the cornerstone of the
national nuclear energy policy. They use plutonium extracted from spent uranium
fuel and can produce more fissionable material than they consume.
At that time, it was believed that the global energy demand at the end of the
20th century would be 10 times larger.
But energy demand tapered off with slower economic growth in Japan, and the
development of fast-breeder reactors stopped when the Monju Fast Breeder reactor
in Fukui Prefecture had to be shut down after a serious accident in December
1995.
The rationale for promoting the policy has also collapsed due to the huge
costs involved and the possibility that reprocessing could lead to plutonium
surpluses.
But complicated interests have been behind the slow progress in revising the
existing policy line, industry analysts say.
In October, the Atomic Energy Commission issued a statement and said that if
the reprocessing policy is stopped, spent nuclear fuel stocked at nuclear
reactors will be full, forcing almost all nuclear plants to stop operating in
the early part of the 2010s.
Each electric power company has been promoting the building new of nuclear
power plants with pledges to remove the spent nuclear fuel. But if the plants
have to continue stockpile spent nuclear fuel, this is sure to fuel bitter
reactions from local governments.
If the reprocessing policy does not go forward, a reprocessing plant being
built in the village of Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, will turn into a dumping
ground for nuclear fuel.
"Nobody wants to take responsibility," said an official at the
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. "So, nuclear fuel reprocessing is
called a reprocessing of responsibility shifting." At a meeting of the
commission in October, a commission member asked, "Who is going to take
responsibility if a reprocessing plant is destroyed by an accident?" But
the discussions were suspended with no clear answer to that question.
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