Kansai Electric Power Co. has angered Fukui prefectural assembly members for claiming to have kept its oft-broken promise to remove spent nuclear fuel accumulating at its nuclear power plants in the prefecture.

Nozomu Mori, president of Kansai Electric, told Fukui Governor Tatsuji Sugimoto on June 12 that the company plans to ship 200 tons of spent nuclear fuel stored at its Takahama plant in the prefecture to France for research purposes.

The company had promised the prefecture to find a candidate site for a temporary storage facility for spent nuclear fuel from its three nuclear plants in the prefecture by the end of this year.

Mori said the utility considers that it has fulfilled the promise with the planned shipment.

“It carries an equal weight to temporary storage in that spent nuclear fuel will be transported out of the prefecture,” he said. “The promise has been fulfilled for now.”

However, the 200 tons account for only about 5 percent of all spent nuclear fuel at Kansai Electric's Takahama, Mihama and Oi nuclear power plants in Fukui Prefecture. 

Mori acknowledged that the amount is limited and promised to “explore all possibilities” to transport more spent nuclear fuel from the plants.

STAKES HIGH FOR KANSAI ELECTRIC 

If it cannot find a candidate site by the end of this year, Kansai Electric said it will halt three aging reactors in Fukui Prefecture: the No. 3 reactor at the Mihama nuclear plant and the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at the Takahama nuclear plant.

While the Mihama reactor is in operation, the two Takahama reactors are scheduled to be restarted between July and September.

Sugimoto said he will make a comprehensive assessment by listening to opinions of the municipalities that host the plants and the prefectural assembly.

However, many prefectural assembly members have expressed anger and distrust toward Kansai Electric.

“They are treating Fukui Prefecture with contempt,” a veteran conservative assembly member said. “They are employing rhetorical tricks and mixing two different issues.”

The government endorses Kansai Electric’s argument.

At a news conference on June 13, industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura backed the company’s plan, repeating the expression Mori used the previous day.

“It carries an equal weight to temporary storage,” Nishimura said.

Noriaki Ozawa, deputy commissioner of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, told the prefectural assembly on June 23 that the shipment can be highly evaluated as a means of transporting spent nuclear fuel out of the prefecture, although it is not the same as building a temporary storage facility.

Assembly members criticized Ozawa, whose agency is part of the industry ministry, for making far-fetched claims out of desperation.

One assembly member said Kansai Electric is taking advantage of the needs of Fukui Prefecture, assuming that it does not want nuclear power plants, which play a critical role in the local economy, to be halted.

The dispute highlights the difficulties for utilities to find temporary storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel from their nuclear plants.

At Kansai Electric’s three nuclear plants in Fukui Prefecture, storage pools for spent nuclear fuel are expected to be filled in five to seven years.

The prefectural government has been calling on the company to build a temporary storage facility outside the prefecture for years.

Kansai Electric previously promised to find a candidate site by the end of 2018, but it has twice postponed the deadline.

At the company’s annual general meeting held in Osaka on June 28, some shareholders criticized the shipment plan, saying the company is trying to deceive Fukui prefectural residents.

Mori told a news conference after the meeting that the company will explain about the plan to gain understanding from officials and residents in Fukui Prefecture.

The government has long been promoting a nuclear fuel recycling program in which spent nuclear fuel is reprocessed and plutonium is extracted as nuclear fuel.

But the reprocessing plant in the village of Rokkasho in Aomori Prefecture, the key facility in the recycling program, has suffered a series of problems and it remains unclear when the facility could start operations.

Tatsujiro Suzuki, a professor of nuclear power policy at Nagasaki University, said Kansai Electric is simply putting off dealing with the problem of spent nuclear fuel, which has nowhere to go in Japan, by shipping it overseas.

“With the reprocessing program stalled, it is difficult to find candidate sites for temporary storage facilities because (prospective host communities) are concerned that spent nuclear fuel might remain there for an extended period,” Suzuki said.

“The government must face up to the deadlock and fundamentally rethink the reprocessing program, including the basic premise that all spent nuclear fuel is to be reprocessed.”

(This article was written by Takashi Yoshida, Kenji Oda, Shuichi Doi and Chiaki Ogihara.)