Reprocess or store?

January 5, 2014

SYMPOSIUM: Japan’s massive stockpile of plutonium casts shadow over nonproliferation efforts

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201401050011

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

Nuclear policy experts from around the world discussed a broad array of issues concerning the use of plutonium in nuclear power generation at a recent symposium in Tokyo.

The symposium, titled “Managing Spent Fuel: To Reprocess or Store,” was jointly sponsored by The Asahi Shimbun Co. and Princeton University. Discussions revolved around the wisdom of Japan’s energy policy of utilizing plutonium for power generation under the government’s nuclear fuel recycling program.

The symposium was comprised of three sections. The experts first addressed the implications of Japan’s policy of reprocessing all spent nuclear fuel for international efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation. Next, the main topic was the economics and safety of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. In the final section, the participants debated how to overcome obstacles to a policy change.

NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES SUSPECT JAPAN HAS HIDDEN PLUTONIUM AGENDA

Japan’s massive stockpile of plutonium and what should be done with it was the topic of discussion for the first section of the symposium. Steve Fetter, a former U.S. White House official during the Obama administration, pointed out that if the reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, starts operation, Japan’s stockpile of plutonium will keep growing despite the lack of a plausible plan to use the material.

Japan should stop reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, or, if that is not possible, it should at least make clear its plan to use plutonium and reduce the amount of plutonium to the minimum necessary, Fetter argued in opening the debate.

Japan has nearly 10 tons of plutonium on its own soil alone. That is enough to make 1,500 or so nuclear warheads. In addition to the risk of terrorists attacking the storage facilities and stealing plutonium, if Japan continues to accumulate plutonium without any economic rationale, and without firm plans for its immediate use in power generation, this can sow doubts about Japan’s intentions, Fetter said.

Countries often make worst-case assumptions about the intentions of their neighbors. They assume the worst, and base their assessments and defense planning solely on capabilities, Fetter noted.

He added: "I have attended meetings elsewhere in East Asia where participants questioned the nature of Japan’s plutonium program. They suggested that it was a type of nuclear deterrent—a signal that Japan could quickly build large numbers of nuclear weapons if it chose to do so. So that is one concern with Japan’s reprocessing program: that neighboring countries might believe that Japan has accumulated a large stockpile of plutonium in part to provide a nuclear weapon option."

"If other countries perceive a growing Japanese plutonium stockpile as a latent nuclear weapon capability, this will contribute to instability in East Asia, and it will undermine Japan’s international reputation,” Fetter noted.

Fetter urged Japan to play a leading role in nuclear nonproliferation.

But Japan, which does not possess nuclear weapons, has been consistently promoting the peaceful use of nuclear power. It has long been regarded as a positive contributor to international efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

Yoriko Kawaguchi, who served as foreign minister and environment minister, ruled out the possibility of Japan arming itself with nuclear weapons.

“Going nuclear would mean withdrawing from the NPT and facing international sanctions like North Korea and Iran,” said Kawaguchi. “Japanese people would never support (Japan’s nuclear armament),” she contended.

Yukio Sato, a former permanent representative of Japan to the United Nations, agreed with Fetter’s argument that Japan should reduce its stockpile of plutonium as soon as possible. But Sato stressed that Japan’s current lack of a feasible plan to use its plutonium is an “unintended situation,” created by the devastating accident that unfolded at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.

As a result of the disaster, all nuclear reactors in Japan are idled, Sato explained. “It is not possible to craft a new plan to use plutonium immediately, but when such a plan is worked out in the future, Japan will return to the principle of holding no more plutonium than absolutely necessary,” he said.

The experts also discussed whether Japan’s fuel reprocessing program is negatively affecting the efforts for nuclear nonproliferation.

Japan is the only country without nuclear arms that continues to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. Countries that are disgruntled about Japan’s privilege--South Korea, for example--are calling on the United States to allow them to do the same.

Fetter asserted that it is difficult to maintain the double standard that allows only Japan to reprocess spent fuel. He expressed concerns that an increase in the number of countries with plutonium would lead to nuclear proliferation and pose a security threat.

Kawaguchi countered this argument by saying Japan needs to have a nuclear fuel recycling system that involves reprocessing spent fuel from the viewpoint of reducing the volume of high-level radioactive waste and securing sufficient energy sources. There is no guarantee that Japan’s move to stop reprocessing will persuade other countries to give up their plans to go nuclear, she said.

“It would be more effective to take steps to enhance the existing international framework for nuclear nonproliferation,” she said.

As concrete steps in this direction, Kawaguchi called for promoting nuclear disarmament, expanding inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and enforcing more rigorously the international sanctions on countries that have violated the NPT.

Sato proposed that Japan should fully disclose information concerning the causes of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the process of decommissioning the reactors at the plant, while demonstrating its commitment to transparency in its nuclear energy policy. Pointing out that there is solid mutual trust between Japan and the United States built through years of cooperation for peaceful use of atomic energy, Sato urged the U.S. government to explain Japan’s position to the countries seeking to be allowed to reprocess spent nuclear fuel so that they understand the situation.

REPROCESSING AND DISPOSAL SHOULD BE COMBINED

In the second section of the symposium, the main topic was the economics and safety of reprocessing. The experts discussed the value of plutonium and the cost of using mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, which is composed of plutonium and uranium.

A study group of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission headed by Tatsujiro Suzuki, vice chairman of the commission, estimated the cost of nuclear fuel recycling based on so-called pluthermal power generation, which burns MOX fuel with ordinary reactors, to be 1.98 yen per kilowatt-hour. That is about two times higher than the cost of simply disposing of spent nuclear fuel, which was estimated at about 1 yen.

Suzuki said reprocessing all spent nuclear fuel in Japan will be costlier than direct disposal by 7 to 8 trillion yen ($67.2 billion to $76.8 billion).

He also referred to Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd.’s estimate that shows using plutonium to generate power doesn’t make economic sense. According to the estimate, at the current price of uranium, using one gram of fissile plutonium to produce electricity costs Japan $40 more than using uranium.

“There is no doubt that reprocessing spent fuel to use plutonium for power generation is costlier than ordinary power generation and disposal of spent fuel,” said Suzuki.

Hajime Yamana, who is chairman of the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning and was another member of the study group, said reprocessing is more expensive than disposal, but only by about 10 percent, if the total costs, including those of building nuclear power plants, are compared.

“In reprocessing, one MOX fuel rod can be made by using eight spent fuel rods,” Yamana said. “Fuel recycling is better from the viewpoint of reducing the amount of stored spent fuel. The question is how the public feels about the cost increase, but I personally think it is acceptable.”

Klaus Janberg, a nuclear engineering consultant who was involved in reprocessing and intermediate storage projects at a major German power company, referred to the estimate that producing MOX fuel alone costs more than three times as much as uranium fuel in Germany. Germany once had started to build a reprocessing plant at home, but abandoned it in 1989 for cost reasons and public opposition. Another reason was that the breeder program was stalled, according to Janberg.

“It was the electric utilities themselves who pulled the plug,” he said. Japanese people should know that MOX fuel is very costly and without a continuous breeder program, which does not exist, it simply makes no sense, he argued.

How about the safety of a reprocessing plant? Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies of the United States and an expert in risks related to nuclear facilities, maintained that it would be dangerous to gather spent fuel from all nuclear power plants in Japan at the Rokkasho reprocessing plant in Aomori Prefecture.

Each of the three storage pools at the plant has a radioactive cesium level of up to 5,000 quadrillion becquerels, according to Thompson. He also drew attention to radioactive cesium in tanks of liquid waste. A major accident or a terrorist attack at the plant, while unlikely to occur, would cause immeasurable harmful effects that history would never forget, said Thompson.

The four experts didn’t agree on whether Japan should pursue reprocessing, but they basically agreed that reprocessing all spent nuclear fuel would not be a wise strategy. They also concurred that Japan should widen the scope of its policy options by introducing direct disposal and increasing intermediate storage.

Yamana added that in assessing a nuclear fuel recycling policy it is important to pay attention to relationships with the local communities and international society, as well as to economic and safety issues. He maintained that the most realistic approach to dealing with the issue of radioactive waste would be a mix of options.

Noting that the government has already poured an enormous amount of taxpayer money into the Rokkasho reprocessing plant, he said the government should secure consumption of MOX fuel at certain facilities while operating the Rokkasho plant in cooperation with Aomori Prefecture. It should then combine reprocessing with direct disposal and intermediate storage for a more balanced approach, he explained.

With the future of nuclear power generation in Japan unclear, Suzuki argued, the government should adopt a policy that uses both reprocessing and direct disposal. The Japan Atomic Energy Commission has already concluded that the government’s nuclear policy should be more flexible, he added. But all these facts and arguments have yet to translate into an actual policy change.

DIFFICULTY OF CHANGING POLICY AND POSSIBLE MEASURES

The central topic for discussions in the third section was how to overcome the difficulty of changing the policy.

Abandoning the policy of promoting nuclear fuel recycling could destroy the trust between the central government and Aomori Prefecture, which has accepted spent nuclear fuel from around the nation for reprocessing. William Walker, a professor at St. Andrews University who has been studying Britain’s nuclear power policy, opened the debate by saying the situation in Britain is similar to that in Japan. He proceeded to offer a cautionary tale from Britain’s point of view.

In the 1970s, Britain launched a project to build a fuel reprocessing plant in Sellafield on the coast of the Irish Sea under the assumption that fast-breeder reactor technology would reach the stage of practical use sooner or later. The British government terminated the fast-breeder reactor program in 1994, mainly because of economic reasons, but the same year operations began at the Sellafield reprocessing plant. Plutonium extracted from spent fuel at the plant has hardly been used.

“Nobody knows what to do with the 100 tons of plutonium that have been left behind,” said Walker.

The reprocessing plant is very important for the local economy and job creation. Politicians don’t want to shut down facilities that are creating jobs, Walker pointed out. They only paid attention to advice from the industry and protected only the vested interests of reprocessing, he added.

Motohisa Furukawa, former minister of national strategy of Japan, mapped out what was named an “innovative energy and environment strategy” in autumn last year, when the Democratic Party of Japan was still in power.

While proposing to phase out nuclear power generation in Japan by the end of the 2030s, the strategy called for continuing the nuclear fuel recycling program in consideration of Aomori Prefecture. The two proposals are certainly inconsistent, Furukawa admitted. “But we have to honor the promises the successive administrations have made to Aomori Prefecture,” he said.

The strategy was aimed at “changing (the nuclear power policy) gradually by unraveling, bit by bit, the tangled web of vested interests concerning nuclear power generation that has been formed over half a century,” he explained.

With this situation in mind, Frank von Hippel, a professor of Princeton University, proposed that spent nuclear fuel be stored, for the time being, in what are called dry casks within the nuclear power plants instead of reprocessing. Even if all of the some 3,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel at the Rokkasho reprocessing plant are returned to the plants which produced them, they can be safely stored if only an average of 20 dry casks’ worth of storage capacity is added to each plant, according to von Hippel. The government would then need to provide sufficient compensation to Aomori Prefecture, he said.

Terminating the reprocessing program would save Japanese taxpayers some 7 trillion yen over time, he said.

The participants also discussed the issue of a final disposal site for radioactive waste. Japan's nuclear energy program is sometimes described as “an apartment without a bathroom.” Hiroya Masuda, former minister of internal affairs and communications, said there has been no sufficient understanding of or consensus on the need and safety of final disposal of radioactive waste among the Japanese people.

The government should take the responsibility for tackling the challenge of selecting and narrowing down candidate sites from the scientific point of view, said Masuda, who heads a working group on nuclear waste at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Since the process takes several decades even if things go smoothly, creating a system to review and reconsider related policy decisions is essential, he argued.

As of now, about 70 percent of national land is scientifically suitable for locating a final disposal site, according to Masuda. The scope of candidate areas will be narrowed further from the viewpoints of volcanoes, geographical features and underground water. Should the areas that have taken the risk of hosting nuclear power plants also take on the risk of having a final disposal site?

It would be better from the viewpoint of fair burden sharing to spread out the risks of having a nuclear plant, an intermediate storage site and a final disposal site, he contended.

Furukawa compared the issues of spent nuclear fuel and final disposal of radioactive waste to the problem of a growing budget deficit. Failing to find a solution to these issues now, Japan has been shifting the risks and costs to future generations. It is vital for people belonging to this generation, which has experienced the Fukushima nuclear disaster, to ask themselves some serious questions about their way of life, he said.

FACT FILE: JAPAN HAS 44 TONS OF PLUTONIUM WITHOUT PLAN FOR ITS USE

Japan’s policy of promoting nuclear fuel recycling has reached a dead end.

Fast-breeder reactor technology was supposed to play the central role in the nuclear fuel recycling program Japan has been promoting since the 1960s. Assuming that the world would eventually run out of uranium, the government developed a plan to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel at a reprocessing plant for use in fast-breeder reactors, which are supposed to produce more fuel than they consume.

But the prices of uranium have not soared, while the difficulty of developing practical fast-breeder reactor technology has become increasingly clear. This approach has also raised concerns about nuclear proliferation.

The United States and many other countries have long pulled the plug on their fuel reprocessing and recycling programs. But Japan has so far not changed its policy and entrusted Britain and France with reprocessing spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium in large amounts.

Japan’s Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor, located in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, has been offline for years with no prospect of restarting operation. As a result, the government has bet on so-called pluthermal power generation, which burns MOX fuel, composed of plutonium and uranium, in ordinary light-water reactors, as the key technology for fuel recycling. But only four reactors had begun to produce electricity with MOX fuel before the reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

All the nuclear reactors in Japan were shut down after the accident, and there is no prospect for crafting a realistic plan to use the stockpile of plutonium. Japan now has some 44 tons of plutonium at home and abroad.

Under these circumstances, the construction of the reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, being built by Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd., is approaching completion. If it starts running at full capacity, the plant will produce about seven tons of fresh plutonium every year.

Japan’s fuel recycling program is based on the policy of reprocessing all spent fuel and doesn’t allow direct disposal of spent fuel. With 3,000 tons of spent fuel stored at the Rokkasho plant and additional 14,000 tons at 17 nuclear plants nationwide, there is little room left for storing more spent fuel. The location of a final disposal site for high-level radioactive waste produced through reprocessing has not been selected yet.