ID :
312979
Tue, 01/07/2014 - 08:27
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Japan Firm Seeks Safety Screening of Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Plant

Tokyo, Jan. 7 (Jiji Press)--Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. on Tuesday filed for regulatory safety screening of its spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. The company aims to complete the plant in the village of Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, northeastern Japan, in October, expecting that the tests by the Nuclear Regulation Authority will finish in about a half year. The company is determined to do whatever it can to ensure the screening goes smoothly, Senior Executive Vice President Kazuhiro Matsumura said. The NRA last month drew up new safety standards for key facilities used in the country's nuclear fuel cycle, such as fuel reprocessing plants. Under the new rules, operators of these facilities must take steps to ensure they can deal with severe accidents caused by earthquakes, tsunami and terrorist attacks. The operators are also required to take a stricter approach in research to determine whether faults running near or directly under their facilities are active or not. Japan Nuclear Fuel previously planned to finish the construction of the plant in October 2013. But the firm put off the planned completion by about one year to meet the new standards. The company, owned mainly by power firms across the country, is taking required steps, such as reinforcement work to make buildings safer against quakes and the introduction of movable pumps, water discharge systems and waterproof doors. The plant, a core component of the country's nuclear fuel cycle, extracts uranium and plutonium from spent fuel generated from nuclear power stations. Its maximum annual capacity stands at 800 tons of uranium equivalents. High-level radioactive liquid waste arising from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel will be solidified by mixing it into glass. The firm plans to hold the solidified radioactive waste for a limited period, but no clear plan has been set for a final disposal site for the waste. The 2.2-trillion-yen plant has seen its scheduled completion date moved back as many as 20 times due to a series of troubles. Initially, the plant was slated to be completed in 1997, four years after the start of construction. It is uncertain whether the NRA can complete its safety screening of the plant in six months as expected. The NRA has already been busy with safety screening tests for nuclear power stations, research into faults under nuclear plants and a response to the 2011 accident at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s <9501> Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station. The authority began examining nuclear power stations under new safety standards for those facilities in July last year. About a half year after that, however, it remains uncertain when the authority can finish its safety checks for the first applicants. Japan Nuclear Fuel also filed for safety screening tests of other facilities, such as a low-level radioactive waste management center and a plant to make mixed oxide, or MOX, fuel from extracted uranium and plutonium. END

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