Japan makes commercial reprocessed nuclear fuel

Tokyo, Nov 2: Japan has started operations to produce reprocessed nuclear fuel for commercial sale for the first time, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. said on Thursday.

It will make uranium-plutonium mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel as a finished product by mid-November at its reprocessing plant in the village of Rokkasho in northern Japan's Aomori prefecture, it said in a statement.

''Our company is considering selling the finished MOX fuel and it will be the first time in Japan to make MOX fuel for commercial use,'' a spokesman for Japan Nuclear Fuel said.

He said the company had not decided when it would ship the product or to whom it would be sold.

MOX fuel is made by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. It has been produced and used in Japan only for experimental purposes and no nuclear power plants use it on a commercial basis.

Japan Nuclear Fuel was set up by the government in 1980. Its shareholders include nine major utilities, among them Tokyo Electric Power Co. and Kansai Electric Power Co. T> Two of the utilities, Kyushu Electric Power Co. and Shikoku Electric Power Co., have already received approval from the central and local governments to use MOX fuel at their nuclear power plants.

Japan Nuclear Fuel plans to start larger-scale commercial production of MOX fuel in Rokkasho next August to reprocess 800 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel a year.

The government supports the nuclear industry partly because resource-poor Japan relies for almost all its energy needs on imports.

The nuclear power industry plans to introduce domestically produced MOX fuel at 16-18 nuclear power generation units by 2010. Currently, 55 nuclear power units generate about 30 percent of Japan's electricity supply.

Despite government support for the reprocessed nuclear fuel, it faces stiff criticism and public concern about cost and security in the nuclear industry as a whole.

Critics say the project is too costly, and that the plutonium in the MOX fuel could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Public confidence in the nuclear industry has been eroded by a series of fatal accidents and cover-ups of safety blunders.

Japan Nuclear Fuel said the MOX fuel at Rokkasho could not be used for nuclear weapons. ''It will become one example of peaceful used of nuclear power,'' the company said.

REUTERS