A Japanese town that was hoping to be the site of a new nuclear power plant has agreed to a geological study to determine its suitability as an interim storage site for spent nuclear fuel.
Chugoku Electric Power Company announced plans in the late 1990s to build new nuclear at Kaminoseki, a small town in the southwestern prefecture of Yamaguchi.
The company applied to the prefectural government and the town for the construction of the plant in 1996 and began preparation work in 2009, but work was suspended following the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
According to the Japan Times, the timing for the start of construction and operation of the Kaminoseki is uncertain, largely because the previous government did not include the construction of new nuclear power plants in its revised 2021 energy policy.
Kaminoseki has now said it would accept the offer of a survey by Chugoku Electric, one of two major nuclear operators, along with Kansai Electric Power Company, whose spent fuel storage pools are almost full.
The Japanese government is backing the increased use of nuclear power as a low-carbon energy source, but the country’s nuclear plants are running out of storage capacity for spent fuel.
The problem stems partly from Japan’s delayed programme to reprocess plutonium from spent fuel for reuse.
A plutonium-burning Monju reactor failed and is being decommissioned, while the launch of the Rokkasho reprocessing plant in northern Japan has been delayed for almost 30 years.
After the Fukushima disaster, nuclear plants were taken offline and their restarts delayed, helping to reduce the spent fuel stockpile. PM Backing Nuclear For Clean Energy
However, when prime minister Fumio Kishida’s government decided to reverse a phaseout and maximise nuclear power as clean energy, concerns over the lack of storage space were raised again.
Earlier this month, Chugoku put forward a proposal to build a storage facility jointly with Kansai Electric, but the plan was met by protests from residents.
The stalled plan to build a nuclear power plant in Kaminoseki has delayed subsidies for the remote town, whose population is aging and shrinking, reports in Japan said.
“The town will only get poorer if we just keep waiting,” Kaminoseki mayor Tetsuo Nishi told a televised news conference on Friday (18 August). “We should do whatever is available now.” He told a meeting the town faces the need to secure revenues amid its tough financial situation.
About 19,000 tonnes of spent fuel is stored at nuclear plants across Japan, taking up about 80% of their storage capacity, according to the economy and industry ministry.
Kansai Electric, Japan’s largest nuclear plant operator, is also looking for additional storage for spent fuel. The cooling pools at its plants are more than 80% full. The company pledged to find a potential interim storage site by the end of this year.
Kansai Electric recently restarted the Takahama-1 nuclear power plant in Fukui prefecture, western Japan, bringing to 11 the number of reactors now in operation in the country.