The Japanese power industry recently announced its plan to further focus on the effort to establish the nuclear fuel cycle, in which spent fuel from nuclear power generation is reprocessed for reuse. Makoto Yagi, president of Kansai Electric Power and chairman of the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (FEPC), an industry group consisting of ten Japanese electric utilities, expressed the industry’s commitment to “make unremitting efforts to promote the establishment of the nuclear fuel cycle” at a press conference held on November 25.
Referring to the direct disposal of spent nuclear fuel, Yagi questioned the rationality of discarding a recyclable resource as well as the viability of employing the direct disposal method, which would require larger areas for disposal than the reprocessing approach, in Japan’s small land area. He stressed the importance of the nuclear fuel cycle that would allow spent fuel to be recycled.
Yagi also commented on the Japanese government’s recent proposal-based policy review session where the policy for the prototype fast-breeder reactor (FBR) Monju was severely challenged. He urged the government to “avoid any decision that may result in the industry losing technologies and human resources fostered in Japan over the years, which would pose a grave impact on the development of the FBR fuel cycle.”
