Japan has forty to fifty years of spent fuel assemblies that it was planning to reprocess into fresh fuel. It was going to separate out the fission products(neutron poisons) from unreacted uranium and plutonium(byproduct of U-238 + neutron absorption) and other trans-uranium elements.
These fresh fuel assemblies would be somewhat more radioactive (because of the other trans-uranic elements) than those made from pure uranium. Once they are inserted into a running reactor, who cares.
This portion of the fuel cycle was declared "undesirable" in this country by Jimmy Carter on the grounds that it would lead to nuclear weapons proliferation. The already-built Barnwell plant in South Carolina was shut down never to operate again.
Japan has voted to join us in the once-through fuel cycle: "The key item in there decision: "The subcommittee recommended that spent nuclear fuel be treated in the "once-through" cycle, where after it is burned in a nuclear reactor the spent fuel is buried after being used in nuclear reactors just one time rather than recycled."
I believe that our country made a mistake so long ago. Judging from the results, its far easier to get weapons grade fissionable materials by separating U-235 than it is to reprocess spent reactor fuel.
Full article at:
http://www.safehaven.com/article/24606/s....The 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that effectively destroyed Tokyo Electric Power Company's six-reactor Fukushima Daichi complex have claimed another victim, Japan's fast breeder reactor program.
Fukushima's effect on Japan's atomic energy program has not had the consequences of a nuclear blast, but more the relentless drip of acid rain, slowly eroding public confidence in the country's nuclear power industry, which last month saw 49 of the country's 54 nuclear power plant (NPP) reactors idled. The figure is hardly insignificant, as the nuclear power plants (NPPS) collectively generated more than 47,000 megawatts, nearly 30 percent of the country's electrical needs.
Now another nail has apparently been driven into Japan's civilian nuclear future.
On 23 February a Japan Atomic Energy Commission panel of experts reviewing Japan's nuclear fuel cycle production policy in the wake of the Fukushima debacle, while acknowledging that a fuel cycle involving a fast-breeder reactor has some advantages, concluded that for Japan it cannot be considered as a realistic option for the next two to three decades due to technological considerations.
The review is effectively a death sentence for Japan's Monju troubled $12 billion experimental fast-breeder reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, intended to reprocess spent nuclear reactor fuel to produce plutonium that can subsequently be recycled and reused to generate electricity. Japan had high hopes that the fast-breeder reactor program could close the loop on its nuclear fuel cycle, allowing it to reuse, recycle and produce fresh fuel for its 54 reactors. The subcommittee's report effectively ends Japan's hopes of using nuclear fuel on a near-endless cycle.
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