Problems with Prototype Monju Breeder Reactor Threaten Nuclear Fuel Recycling Plan in Japan

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Nuclear Power - Economics, Design, & Industry

Date posted: 12/27/15

The Japan energy policy faces major obstacles in 2016, with problems surrounding an experimental reactor threatening to foil plans to recycle nuclear fuel. The government is trying to develop a commercial fast-breeder nuclear reactor in order to recycle nuclear fuel and raise the energy self-sufficiency rate of the fifth-biggest energy consuming country in the world, currently around 6%. Resource-poor Japan imports from Canada and other countries all of its uranium for nuclear power generation, one of its core power sources, but it seeks to produce fuel on its own by using an advanced fast-breeder reactor capable of producing more plutonium than it consumes. Plutonium can be used as nuclear fuel for conventional and fast-breeder reactors by mixing it with uranium. Japan currently consigns overseas companies to reprocess its spent fuel into uranium-plutonium mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel with a plan to launch the reprocessing at home in the future. However, the fast-breeder reactor development project recently ran into major technical trouble, putting the experimental reactor at risk of shutting down. The regulator warned the government in November to consider steps to guarantee the safety of the trouble-prone Monju reactor, including an option to close it, if it cannot find a new operator within six months. Monju is the prototype fast-breeder nuclear reactor under development. The government has spent more than 1 trillion yen (US $8.27 billion) on the project. But its repeated safety problems have left the reactor idled much of the time since it first achieved criticality in 1994. The Nuclear Regulation Authority has criticized the current operator, the government-backed Japan Atomic Energy Agency, for having made little progress in enhancing safety management even after a flurry of safety problems led to its longtime halt. The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan had planned to use MOX fuel at 15 of their conventional reactors by the end of March 2016.