Photo/Illutration The interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Mutsu, Aomori Prefecture (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

AOMORI--The governor of Aomori is set to sign off on storing spent nuclear fuel in the coastal town of Mutsu in this prefecture, launching Japan’s first non-power plant storage facility.

Governor Soichiro Miyashita is expected to announce on July 29 that Aomori Prefecture will sign a safety agreement with the city and facility operator Recyclable-Fuel Storage Co., removing one obstacle to the facility going live.

To allay concerns by residents, the facility is dubbed an interim storage site. As a sweetener, it will generate revenues for local projects through a tax on the material.

RFS is a subsidiary of major nuclear plant operators Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) and Japan Atomic Power Co.

Currently, Japan's nuclear waste is stored at power plants operated by utilities. 

Mutsu will begin receiving waste by March 2025. RFS plans to deposit its first cask containing 12 tons of spent fuel from TEPCO’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture. Within two years of that date, the site will contain 96 tons of spent fuel in eight casks.

The prefectural and municipal governments aim to generate more than 300 million yen ($1.9 million) by March 2029, by taxing the waste at 620 yen per kilogram.

The storage facility has been a long time coming. Faced with financial difficulties, Mutsu proposed hosting it in 2003. Since then, the national government has provided financial support for the project.

There was then a back-and-forth with RFS over the tax, which RFS argued could make the project unprofitable.  

The safety deal limits storage at the Mutsu facility to 50 years. However, residents are concerned that its life could be extended and that the site may become a permanent disposal site for radioactive waste because there is no clear national policy for spent nuclear fuel.

Japan is a longtime advocate of recycling spent uranium and plutonium for reuse in reactors.

However, construction has stalled at a proposed fuel reprocessing plant in Rokkasho in Aomori Prefecture. Initially scheduled for 1997, the plant's launch has been repeatedly postponed, leading to widespread criticism that the fuel recycling project is making no real progress.

With nowhere to go, a growing amount of spent fuel is currently stored at nuclear plants nationwide.

(This article was written by Yusuke Noda and Teruto Unuma.)

Related News