Japan delays uranium use after N-mishap

"Since the Tokaimura accident, there have been increasing fear and distrust among residents toward nuclear operations," a Kashiwazaki government official said. "Taking such feelings into consideration, we decided it was appropriate to postpone the operation (originally scheduled for February 2000) until 2001," the government official said. But a spokesman for TEPCO said it would press ahead with plans to use MOX fuel in February 2000 atanother plant in Fukushima, on the Pacific Ocean 240 kilometres north of Tokyo.

TEPCO’s decision to delay its MOX fuel plans for Kashiwazaki was influenced by the fact that none of the fuel had yet been delivered to the plant there, he said. "We were asked by local authorities to put off the operation using MOX (mixed plutonium-uranium oxide) fuel until 2001 and we told them we would act upon their request," the TEPCO spokesman said.

"We like to cooperate with the local authorities and we were able to postpone the plan since we have yet to receive MOX fuel for the Kashiwazaki plant," he said. But "as we already have the MOX fuel at the Fukushima plant, we will go ahead with the original plan there." MOX fuel curbs the need for natural uranium by combining uranium and plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel.

A British-flagged vessel unloaded 210 kg of MOX fuel at the Fukushima plant in September amid protests from Greenpeace. It was the first shipment to Japan of MOX fuel. On September 30, threeworkers at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, 120 kilometres northeast of Tokyo, set off the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. They illegally used steel buckets to pour 16 kilogrammes of uranium into a precipitation tank, setting off a critical reaction that exposed at least 69 people to radiation and forced more than 320,000 to shelter at home for more than a day.

The plant was run by JCO Co Ltd, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Metal Mining Co Ltd aside from TEPCO, the only other company planning to use MOX in Japan is Kansai Electric Power Co Inc, which received a shipment of the fuel on October 1. A company spokeswoman said it would start using MOX fuel at its Takahama plant on the sea of Japan 440 kilometres west of Tokyo, within this year, as planned.