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Nautilus Institute at RMIT
RMIT / Our Organisation / Research / Groups in Research and Innovation / Nautilus Institute at RMIT
This page is no longer maintained. All this material, including new content, can now be found at the Nautilus Global Nuclear Future: A Japanese Perspective section of the Global Collaborative. This site was archived in 2008.
Security and Sustainability Lecture 06-01T September 2006
Source: T. Katsuta, T. Suzuki, "Japan's Civilian Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Nuclear Spent Fuel Management Issue," International Panel on Fissile Material (IPFM) Report (Draft), August 2006.
Japan has sufficient spent fuel storage capacity, with a recently agreed away-from-reactor (AFR) interim storage facility (5,000 tons) at Mutsu city, until mid 2020s. However, one of the conditions for the local community's agreement to accept spent fuel storage is that the reprocessing policy be maintained, since the local community are concerned that spent fuel will stay there forever without reprocessing. In Japan, spent fuel is not defined as "high level waste (HLW)" and thus legally not allowed to be disposed of with other HLW.
This figure shows future cumulative inventory of spent fuel in Japan. It begins with spent fuel as at the end of March 2004. It then shows projected spent fuel according to a low burn-up rate, and according to a high burn-up rate. It shows the spent fuel that is at the reactor pool, at the Rokkasho reprocessing plant pool and at the Mutsu interium storage. It also shows the planned reprocessing at Rokkasho.
The left hand scale ranges from 0 (low) to 70,000 (high). Across the bottom, the scale shows the years from 2000 (beginning) to 2050 (end).
The graph begins at March 2004, with a starting point of 10,000 (approx). It then trends upwards, with the low burn-up rate increasing faster than the high burn-up rate. High burn-up rate increases to 55,000 (approx) by 2050, while low burn-up rate increases to 62,500 (approx). After 2025 (approx), the area under the low burn-up rate is marked "additional storage capacity to aviod reprocessing". It starts at 32,500 (approx) and increases to 62,500 (approx) by 2050.
The graph is drawn from: T. Katsuta, T. Suzuki, "Japan's Civilian Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Nuclear Spent Fuel Management Issue," International Panel on Fissile Material (IPFM) Report (Draft), August 2006.
This figure is part of a talk given by Tatsujiro Suzuki, entitled Global Nuclear Future: A Japanese Perspective. The full text of the talk is available.
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