The ruling Democratic Party of Japan is preparing to call for a radical overhaul of Japan’s long-nurtured policy of developing a complete nuclear fuel cycle, sources said June 7.
The ruling Democratic Party of Japan is preparing to call for a radical overhaul of Japan’s long-nurtured policy of developing a complete nuclear fuel cycle, sources said June 7.
The party’s submission to the Energy and Environment Council, the government panel tasked with recommending a new national energy policy, is expected to propose that the government drop its current policy of seeking to reprocess all spent nuclear fuel.
It will argue for a more flexible approach under which some nuclear fuel processing will continue alongside direct disposal of some fuel. That would break the complete cycle envisaged in the government’s Framework for Nuclear Energy Policy 2005, which enshrined the reprocessing of all spent nuclear fuel as Japan’s basic policy.
The government is expected to compile a new Basic Energy Plan this summer and the 2005 framework is also expected to be reviewd. The Energy and Environment Council began discussing energy and nuclear policy on June 8.
On the treatment of spent nuclear fuel, the council plans to present three options: reprocessing all spent nuclear fuel; directly disposing of all spent nuclear fuel; and pursuing reprocessing and direct disposal concurrently.
The draft proposal compiled by the DPJ energy project team picks the third option, the sources said. The DPJ is expected to propose that nuclear fuel cycle policies “should allow flexibility.”
While backing the government’s stated policy of reducing Japan’s dependence on nuclear power generation as much as possible, the DPJ’s draft says the issue of what to do with spent nuclear fuel is “an inescapable problem for both supporters and those cautious about nuclear power plants.”
The DPJ team also urges the government to make more information available to the public about the amount of spent nuclear fuel being kept at plants and other key information.