Japan’s nuclear policy-setting panel on Tuesday approved revised guidelines on plutonium use, putting a cap on its stockpile and pledging to eventually reduce it to address international concerns, but without giving a specific timeline or targets. The Japan Atomic Energy Commission’s guidelines call for some government oversight
Japan’s nuclear policy-setting panel on Tuesday approved revised guidelines on plutonium use, putting a cap on its stockpile and pledging to eventually reduce it to address international concerns, but without giving a specific timeline or targets.
The Japan Atomic Energy Commission’s guidelines call for some government oversight to carefully regulate operation of the Rokkasho reprocessing plant in northern Japan when it starts up in three years so the amount of extracted plutonium doesn’t spike.
Despite security concerns raised by Washington and others, the stockpile isn’t decreasing due to difficulties in achieving a full nuclear fuel recycling program and slow restarts of reactors amid setbacks from the 2011 Fukushima disaster.
The guidelines, updated for the first time in 15 years, also urge Japanese utility operators to steadily consume plutonium reprocessed overseas, but does not elaborate on how that works out with additional plutonium from Rokkasho.
The guidelines say Japan’s stockpile should not exceed “the current level.”
Japan now has about 47 tons of separated plutonium — 11 tons at home, and 36 tons in Britain and France, where spent fuel from Japanese nuclear plants has been reprocessed and stored because Japan is not able to reprocess it into MOX fuel at home.
