Japanese nuclear power steams ahead

Japan’s New National Energy Strategy calling for increased use of nuclear power to generate electricity and, more controversially, the need to extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel for future use to power reactors has run into trouble because of repeated accidents and mishaps at various plants.

So it was considered something of a victory for nuclear power generation when the Mihama-3 reactor in Fukui prefecture in western Japan resumed full-scale commercial operation on Wednesday, two and a half years after it was shut down in the

wake of the nation’s deadliest accident at a nuclear power plant.
The Mihama-3 accident temporarily halted the utility’s plans to

participate in Japan’s “pluthermal” program, the next phase of the country’s nuclear-power development. It involves the use of mixed uranium and plutonium (“mixed oxide” or MOX) fuel in civilian power-generating plants. (“Plutherma” refers to plutonium and “thermal”, ie light-water reactors.)

KEPCO froze the pluthermal program at its Takahama nuclear power plant, but Mori has said, “We would like to reconsider it in a concrete manner after the safety operations of the Mihama-3 reactor are confirmed.” The program got the nod from the prefectural government in March 2004, but was put on ice because of the accident that August.

Japan imports almost all of its oil and is also the world’s largest importer of liquefied natural gas, so the government attaches great importance to nuclear-power promotion as a key to ensuring national energy security. Its New National Energy Strategy, adopted last May, calls for, among other things, raising the percentage of nuclear power in the total national electricity supply from the current 30% to 40% or more by 2030.

Asia Times