KAMINOSEKI, Yamaguchi Prefecture—Neighboring municipalities have grown irate over a surprise plan to build an interim storage facility here for spent nuclear fuel, but there may be little they can do to stop it.

The facility would be the second of its kind in Japan located outside the grounds of a nuclear power plant. The first one is already operational in Mutsu, Aomori Prefecture.

Chugoku Electric Power Co., the regional utility that serves this area of western Japan, is expected to decide as early as spring on whether the Kaminoseki site is suitable for storing nuclear waste.

It finished a drilling study at the site in mid-November last year.

Chugoku Electric initially planned to build a nuclear power plant in Kaminoseki. The Hiroshima-based utility, however, stopped preparatory work after the triple meltdown at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in 2011.

Senior Kaminoseki officials and assembly members held extensive behind-the-scenes discussions on creating an alternative form of “community development measures.”

The Kaminoseki town government then approached Chugoku Electric, which proposed building the interim storage facility.

This plan was disclosed to the public in August 2023.

Kaminoseki residents and four neighboring municipalities--Yanai, Suo-Oshima, Hirao and Tabuse--had until then been kept in the dark about the plan.

Chugoku Electric later provided explanations to the neighbors, but Koji Higashi, Tabuse’s mayor, remains displeased.

“We were kicked in the butt without notice,” he said.

The late disclosure is not the only thing that has bothered neighboring authorities and Kaminoseki residents.

The planned facility is ostensibly intended to store spent nuclear fuel “temporarily” until it is reprocessed.

However, construction of a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, is not likely to be completed anytime soon.

“A good number of our residents are concerned the facility could end up as a permanent storage site,” said Kiyotaka Fujimoto, mayor of Suo-Oshima.

“The central government maintains that interim storage facilities are safe, but those who feel anxious about safety will never stop feeling that way,” said Yanai Mayor Kentaro Ihara.

There are also misgivings that the site could end up storing spent nuclear fuel from Kansai Electric Power Co., a partner in the project that does not serve this area.

If Chugoku Electric decides to use the site for temporary storage, it plans to present more specific information, including the scale and economic effects of the facility, to Kaminoseki town authorities.

There are no legal provisions that say construction of an interim storage facility requires the consent of neighboring municipalities.

Higashi, the Tabuse mayor, has been calling on the Kaminoseki town government to hear the views of its neighbors before reaching any conclusion on the storage facility.

If Kaminoseki were to accept the plan, the four municipal governments could still present Chugoku Electric with their own “conditions,” including safety assurances and information disclosure.

Chugoku Electric officials told The Asahi Shimbun they would consider making certain “contribution measures” for the broader hosting area.

LOW-KEY PARTNER

The interim storage plan is formally a joint development project by Chugoku Electric and Osaka-based Kansai Electric.

Kansai Electric had previously asked Chugoku Electric about jointly building a similar facility. But Chugoku Electric made the first approaches regarding the plan for the Kaminoseki site, officials said.

Chugoku Electric is a mid-ranking player among Japan’s major power utilities.

The company decided, from a financial viewpoint, that it would be difficult for the utility to build and operate an interim storage facility by itself, a Chugoku Electric official said.

Among other regional utilities, Kyushu Electric Power Co. and Shikoku Electric Power Co. are each building a facility for storing nuclear waste on the grounds of their own nuclear plants.

“Kansai Electric was the one utility whose demand matched ours,” the Chugoku Electric official said.

Kansai Electric, which operates the Takahama, Oi and Mihama nuclear plants in Fukui Prefecture, is under pressure to take spent nuclear fuel from the three plants out of the prefecture.

Fukui Prefecture authorities argue they agreed to host the power plants but have never agreed to host storage sites for spent nuclear fuel from the plants.

They have been calling on parties, including the central government and Kansai Electric, to find a storage place outside the prefecture for the spent fuel.

No candidate site has emerged.

At the end of last October, predictions were made on when the spent fuel pools at the three nuclear plants would be filled to capacity: a minimum of three years or so at the Takahama plant and about five years at the earliest at the Oi and Mihama plants.

Despite the urgent nature of the situation, Kansai Electric has shown no signs of coming to the forefront of the Kaminoseki plan.

That is because residents “have doubts about why they would have to undertake Kansai Electric’s waste,” Higashi said.

Both utilities are wary of a possible rise in negative public sentiment.

“Local communities would not accept this plan if Kansai Electric were to play an active role in it,” the Chugoku Electric official said.

“We would rub residents the wrong way if we were to come to the fore,” a Kansai Electric official said. “For now, we should leave it up to Chugoku Electric.”

Kaminoseki Mayor Tetsuo Nishi said he believes that both power companies will have to properly answer questions already raised by the neighboring municipalities.

(This article was written by Satoshi Okumura, Fumito Suzuki, Tomoki Morishita, Yoshichika Yamanaka and Takuro Yamano.)