7 Mar (NucNet): Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited (JNFL) is planning to build a research and development facility to develop vitrification technology.
The Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JAIF) said JNFL has been working on vitrification R&D so it can improve the reliability of the technology before the new Rokkasho reprocessing plant is completed.
The new technology development facility, on the Rokkasho site in the northern prefecture of Aomori, will be used to verify vitrification technology through tests using full-scale equipment, and also to develop remotely-controlled maintenance technology.
Construction of the facility is expected to begin this month, with completion scheduled for March 2013, JAIF said.
JNFL announced in September 2010 that it had again postponed completion of the Rokkasho reprocessing plant, pushing back scheduled commissioning to October 2012, two years later than the target date it announced in August 2009.
JNFL has experienced problems with the plant’s high-level waste vitrification unit and said it had decided to redesign the unit to better control temperature of the molten glass.
Rokkasho will have a reprocessing capacity of about 800 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel annually, from which it will be able to extract about eight tonnes of plutonium a year.
JNFL’s long-term plan is to use plutonium from Rokkasho in Japan’s fast breeder programme. It also intends to burn the plutonium as mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel in light water reactors.
The plant was originally scheduled to start full commercial operation in mid-2007.
>>Related reports in the NucNet database (available to subscribers)
Another Postponement For Japan’s Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant (News in Brief No. 161, 13 September 2010)
