Japan, which lacks a permanent waste disposal repository, will move forward with plans for a nuclear fuel recycling program that would involve extracting plutonium from spent fuel, according to the Associated Press.
The plan has been highly criticized by China and Russia due to Japan’s huge plutonium stockpile and relatively few prospects for consuming it as nuclear fuel. Japan doesn’t have a mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel plant yet.
The country’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said the program will help reduce the volume and toxicity of high-level nuclear waste, and that the extraction of plutonium from spent fuel is positive from the point of view of resource conservation. Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, announced plans to step down in August, citing health problems.
Critics say the program just adds to the country’s large, lingering supply of plutonium. Japan has 45.5 tons of separated plutonium. Some is stored in the country, while some is stored in Britain and France because Japan doesn’t have a large enough facility to store all the fuel, which is enough to make 6,000 atomic bombs.
Japan reprocesses spent fuel because it plans to reuse it as MOX fuel, rather than dispose of it as waste, as the United States and other nations do. Japan is the only non-nuclear weapons state that separates plutonium for peaceful purposes, according to the Associated Press.
