Rokkasho: nuclear white elephant or yen sucking black hole?

[kristopher]

Rokkasho: nuclear white elephant or yen sucking black hole?
BY JEFF KINGSTON
SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES
SEP 21, 2013

...Two decades and $21 billion after construction commenced, Japan’s nuclear reprocessing and waste storage facility at Rokkasho may finally start operating in 2014, but probably later. There have been numerous delays and large cost overruns, but the operator, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. (JNFL), is hopeful because Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has revived prospects for restarting nuclear reactors. The Japan Atomic Energy Commission and JNFL want to get the facility running as soon as possible, but the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) is busy reviewing applications to restart 12 reactors based on the new safety guidelines issued in July 2013.

The NRA has also drafted tighter regulation standards, which take effect in December 2013 for facilities like Rokkasho that deal with nuclear fuel and is expected to conduct an in-depth geological survey of the site to determine if it is located on top of active fault-lines. Thus the timing of Rokkasho’s commissioning remains uncertain.

A report issued recently by the Princeton, New Jersey-based International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), compiled by independent nuclear experts, gives a failing grade to Japan’s nuclear fuel recycling policy and urges reconsideration because it is, “dysfunctional, dangerous and costly” and because “Japan is undermining the non-proliferation regime.” The IPFM recommends, inter alia, a government takeover of spent fuel management, air-cooled dry-cask storage of spent fuel at nuclear power plants, continuation of local subsidies to offset axing the reprocessing project and deep burial of Japan’s 44 tons of separated plutonium.

<snip>

Recycling spent fuel comes with a staggering price tag; a projected $245 billion over 40 years. Just burying it would be much cheaper, but then the government would have to coax a desperate town in a lightly populated area with a stable geology to become the nation’s designated nuclear cesspool for the next few centuries. Is there such a place in Japan? Aomori has already said “No thanks.” With the Rokkasho and Mutsu facilities, a nuclear reactor close by at Higashidori (that the NRA believes is sited above active geological faults) and another under construction at Oma, this backwater already is a major nuclear node.

Mothballing Rokkasho ....

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2013/09/21/commentary/rokkasho-nuclear-white-elephant-or-yen-sucking-black-hole

[JEB]

1. Contrary to corporate claims

There is nothing cheap, nothing clean, nothing safe about nuclear energy.

[kristopher]

3. "Nothing" isn't how I'd word it.

In sum, they are a bad path to pursue, but the fact is by cherry picking arguments and lying nuclear energy can be portrayed as extremely cheap, clean and benign.

[kristopher]

5. I rest my case

http://www.democraticunderground.com/112754769#post4

[PamW]

4. Except for...

There is nothing cheap, nothing clean, nothing safe about nuclear energy.

.."nothing cheap"; except coal is the only technology that produces electricity at a lower price per kilowatt-hour. Without fracking, gas is more expensive, as are wind and solar.

..."nothing clean"; except nuclear doesn't dump its waste into the environment as do fossil fuels. Although the occasional accidents have put a trivial amount of radionuclides into the environment ( in comparison to what Mother Nature has put into our naturally radioactive universe )...the fossil fueled plants toss crap into the environment when they are operating normally.

..."nothing safe"; except nuclear power has a better safety record than commercial aviation, and both nuclear and aviation have a much better safety record than automobiles, which aren't going away any time soon.

Nothing is perfectly "cheap, clean, or safe"; but nuclear is better in all three than other technologies that the US public and the public worldwide, accepts without complaint.

PamW

[Demeter]

2. I choose all of the above

Slow learners will be the death of us as a species.

[kristopher]

8. Any Bell Curve has two tails.

I don't think it is intelligence that creates our problems; from my observations I'd say that most of them originate with anti-social forms of mental illness and indifference.

[PamW]

6. You have your choice...

You have your choice...even if you stopped all reactors today, the USA for example has 77,000 metric tonnes of spent fuel.

That problem doesn't magically disappear just because you shutdown the reactors; and it is a long term problem since the waste has components with multi-thousand year lifetimes.

Or instead of shutting down your reactors, you could use them to transmute those long-lived waste products into short-lived waste products, as the scientists originally intended.

In order to do that, you need operating reactors, and a reprocessing facility, so you can transmute waste into short-lived waste, as nuclear physicist Dr. Till explains in this interview from PBS Frontline:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

Q: And you repeat the process.

A: Eventually, what happens is that you wind up with only fission products, that the waste is only fission products that have, most have lives of hours, days, months, some a few tens of years. There are a few very long-lived ones that are not very radioactive.

So you have your choice. We could stop nuclear power now, but then we would still have hazardous material to store for a VERY LONG time.

Or we could keep the reactors and the reprocessing facilities going, and transmute the hazardous material into material with short lifetimes ( the longest "a few tens of years" to quote Dr. Till ), and all the while we get electricity as a product too.

Why would one want to stop the horses in mid-stream, when, if you do so, you are guaranteed of getting wet?

PamW

[kristopher]

7. Nope

Rokkasho: nuclear white elephant or yen sucking black hole?
BY JEFF KINGSTON
SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES
SEP 21, 2013

...Two decades and $21 billion after construction commenced, Japan’s nuclear reprocessing and waste storage facility at Rokkasho may finally start operating in 2014, but probably later. There have been numerous delays and large cost overruns, but the operator, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. (JNFL), is hopeful because Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has revived prospects for restarting nuclear reactors. The Japan Atomic Energy Commission and JNFL want to get the facility running as soon as possible, but the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) is busy reviewing applications to restart 12 reactors based on the new safety guidelines issued in July 2013.

The NRA has also drafted tighter regulation standards, which take effect in December 2013 for facilities like Rokkasho that deal with nuclear fuel and is expected to conduct an in-depth geological survey of the site to determine if it is located on top of active fault-lines. Thus the timing of Rokkasho’s commissioning remains uncertain.

A report issued recently by the Princeton, New Jersey-based International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), compiled by independent nuclear experts, gives a failing grade to Japan’s nuclear fuel recycling policy and urges reconsideration because it is, “dysfunctional, dangerous and costly” and because “Japan is undermining the non-proliferation regime.” The IPFM recommends, inter alia, a government takeover of spent fuel management, air-cooled dry-cask storage of spent fuel at nuclear power plants, continuation of local subsidies to offset axing the reprocessing project and deep burial of Japan’s 44 tons of separated plutonium.

<snip>

Recycling spent fuel comes with a staggering price tag; a projected $245 billion over 40 years. Just burying it would be much cheaper, but then the government would have to coax a desperate town in a lightly populated area with a stable geology to become the nation’s designated nuclear cesspool for the next few centuries. Is there such a place in Japan? Aomori has already said “No thanks.” With the Rokkasho and Mutsu facilities, a nuclear reactor close by at Higashidori (that the NRA believes is sited above active geological faults) and another under construction at Oma, this backwater already is a major nuclear node.

Mothballing Rokkasho ....

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2013/09/21/commentary/rokkasho-nuclear-white-elephant-or-yen-sucking-black-hole