May 22 - Jiji Press English News Service

The Japanese government on Monday gave the green light for a plan to swap a large amount of low-level nuclear waste generated by Japanese power plants and reprocessed in Britain for a much smaller volume of high-level British nuclear waste.

The swap deal was approved the same day at a meeting of the advisory committee for energy of the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

The overall levels of radioactivity contained by the Japanese and British waste will be the same.

Under the deal, Japan will transport high-level nuclear waste from Britain for disposal at Japanese storage sites, while Britain will accept at its storage sites transuranic, or TRU, waste derived from Japanese spent nuclear fuels. TRU has low radioactivity but is nonetheless hard to dispose of because of its long radioactive half- life.

Japan consigns TRU waste-reprocessing to Britain and France, and Britain had planned to return the reprocessed waste to Japan over the years from 2013.

The British high-level waste to be accepted by Japan under the swap deal will be able to be transported in just one shipment, compared with the estimated 37 shipments that would be needed for the amount of TRU to be accepted by Britain.The deal will also reduce Japan's waste disposal costs to 85 billion yen from 320 billion yen.  END

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