Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited to Pioneer the Japanese Nuclear Fuel Cycle

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited's (JNFL) (Rokkasho, Japan) Rokkasho Reprocessing Facility, which is under development in Rokkasho, Japan, some 600 kilometers north of Tokyo, will be Japan's first nuclear fuel reprocessing facility. JNFL specializes in the production of nuclear fuel for use in Japan, as well as storage, disposal and, more recently, the reprocessing of nuclear fuel.

MOX fuel has become an important issue in Japan. As more and more Japanese nuclear power stations turn to reprocessed fuel, energy companies are forced to find ways to implement Japan's emerging pluthermal policies. The Rokkasho Reprocessing Facility will have a designed reprocessing capacity of 800 tons of uranium per year; the amount of spent fuel from 30 class reactors of 1,000 megawatts (MW) each. JNFL's Uranium Enrichment Plant, also in Rokkasho, is under expansion; when completed, it will have a total production capacity of 1,500 separative work units annually, or enough uranium to provide for one-third of Japanese nuclear power stations.

This June, JNFL began the construction of new spent fuel containment facilities, to respond to the company's impending production increase. The US$86 million addition, when complete next July, is predicted to be able to house 13,500 containers of low-level solid nuclear waste. Spent fuel collected in these containers will be disposed of when the low-level radiation waste disposal center is brought online. JNFL hopes to establish a nuclear fuel cycle within Japan to decrease reliance on foreign fuels and disposal services.

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