The 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that effectively
destroyed Tokyo Electric Power Company's six-reactor Fukushima
Daichi complex have claimed another victim, Japan's fast breeder
reactor program.
Fukushima's effect on Japan's atomic energy program has not
had the consequences of a nuclear blast, but more the relentless
drip of acid rain, slowly eroding public confidence in the
country's nuclear power industry, which last month saw 49 of the
country's 54 nuclear power plant (
NPP
) reactors idled. The figure is hardly insignificant, as the
nuclear power plants (NPPS) collectively generated more than
47,000 megawatts, nearly 30 percent of the country's electrical
needs.
Now another nail has apparently been driven into Japan's
civilian nuclear future.
On 23 February a Japan Atomic Energy Commission panel of
experts reviewing Japan's nuclear fuel cycle production policy in
the wake of the Fukushima debacle, while acknowledging that a
fuel cycle involving a fast-breeder reactor has some advantages,
concluded
that for Japan it cannot be considered as a realistic option for
the next two to three decades due to technological
considerations.
The review is effectively a death sentence for Japan's Monju
troubled $12 billion experimental fast-breeder reactor in
Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, intended to reprocess spent nuclear
reactor fuel to produce plutonium that can subsequently be
recycled and reused to generate electricity. Japan had high hopes
that the fast-breeder reactor program could close the loop on its
nuclear fuel cycle, allowing it to reuse, recycle and produce
fresh fuel for its 54 reactors. The subcommittee's report
effectively ends Japan's hopes of using nuclear fuel on a
near-endless cycle.
The Japan Atomic Energy Commission subcommittee commented in a
draft document summarizing its discussions that the country's
best option during the next 20-30 years instead of reprocessing
spent nuclear fuel would be instead to recycle plutonium-uranium
mixed oxide (MOX) reactor fuel. The subcommittee recommended that
spent nuclear fuel be treated in the "once-through" cycle, where
after it is burned in a nuclear reactor the spent fuel is buried
after being used in nuclear reactors just one time rather than
recycled.
The subcommittee members' viewpoints were varied, not
unanimous, as Chairman Tatsujiro Suzuki told reporters that he
believed that fast-breeder reactors have "extremely advantageous
characteristics from a long-term viewpoint." According to the
subcommittee's report, the "once-through" cycle has high economic
efficiency, while MOX recycling has high efficiency of uranium
use.
Given Japanese public opinion sensitivity about nuclear power
in light of Fukushima, every aspect of Japan's civilian nuclear
power program is more closely scrutinized than in the past, and
the Monju fast-breeder reactor has had its share of problems.
Construction started on the sodium-cooled, MOX-fuelled Monju
fast-breeder reactor in 1986, with the reactor going critical in
April 1994, but shortly after coming online the facility suffered
a severe fire. Japanese officials subsequently attempted to cover
up the accident, with the result that the Monju fast-breeder
reactor was kept offline until 6 May 2010.
Exemplifying its problems, as of June 2011, the Monju
fast-breeder reactor has only generated electricity for one hour
since going critical in 1984.
Adding to the irony, Fukui Prefecture is Japan's most
pro-nuclear province, housing 14 nuclear reactors. Fukushima
Prefecture held a distant second place with 10 reactors. But
Monju's effective mothballing ends Tokyo's vision of using
fast-breeder reactors to produce more nuclear fuel than they
burn, allowing for a cycle in which new nuclear fuel is created
by the fast-breeder reactor, extracted, reprocessed and used anew
by other NPPs.
Japan Atomic Energy Agency fast-breeder program Director
General Satoru Kondo commented, "It was supposed to be the dream
reactor, powering Japan for 100 or 200 years. I never thought it
would take this long."
But dreams remain exactly that - dreams, with the effective
loss of Monju, Japan's nuclear power industry is back to square
one after more than two decades and $12 billion invested -
importing nuclear fuel for its increasing contentious nuclear
power generation program.
So, Japan's NPP program, for which Monju was hoped nearly to
eliminate costly uranium imports, is, like Japan's other, more
conventional sources of power generation, yet one source of hard
currency expenditure.
Dreams die hard, some more and expensively so than others.
Source:
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Another-Fukushima-Casualty-Japans-Fast-Breeder-Reactor-Program.html
By. John C.K. Daly of
Oilprice.com