Japan Sticks to Nuclear Fuel Cycle Despite Plutonium Stockpile

摘要

Japan's government said it will pursue its nuclear fuel recycling program that would involve extracting plutonium from spent fuel, despite international concerns about the country's already huge plutonium stockpile and lack of prospects for effectively consuming it as nuclear fuel. Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato, at a meeting with the governor of Aomori prefecture, home to Japan's pending nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, reaffirmed that new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga' s government will pursue the country's nuclear energy policy. "The government will firmly promote our nuclear energy policy and fuel cycle programs," Kato said. He said Japan will make effort to reduce volume and toxicity of high-level nuclear waste, and extract plutonium from spent fuel from a resource conservation point of view. But critics say continuation of spent fuel reprocessing only adds to Japan's already large plutonium stockpile. Japan also lacks a final repository for high-level nuclear waste.