January 31, 2012

Monthly Press Conference

Today, President Kawai held a monthly press conference in Aomori City and talked about the "Preliminary test of the Vitrification Facility", "Current status of JNFL's activities on emergency safety measures" and "JNFL's expectation for discussion on Nuclear Policy"

"Preliminary Test of the Vitrification Facility"

  • JNFL started flow test using simulated glass beads on January 24. However, following the slowdown of the flow rate, we made necessary countermeasures to recover the flow.
  • The operability of the handling equipment of the vitrification facility has already been confirmed. JNFL will proceed with the test with utmost caution while continuing to perform the aforementioned operations.

"Current status of activities on emergency safety measures"

  • As for the deployment of power supply cars that act as the power source for the reprocessing plant in an emergency, JNFL has completed the deployment of all three power supply cars as planned, after positioning additional one in December last year and another one today.
  • JNFL plans to conduct a mid-winter training of the emergency response training on February 15 assuming the total loss of AC power, with participation of personnel concerned. The training will be open to the media.
  • The training includes feeding electricity from a power supply car and injecting water into a spent fuel storage pool. JNFL has invited human factor experts and the other nuclear facility operators in the prefecture as part of efforts to reinforce the partnership based on the Cooperation Agreement signed among them.

"Discussion on Nuclear Policy"

  • The meeting of the Nuclear Framework Developing Committee held on January 26 has illustrated the basis of evaluating and selecting the future Nuclear Policy. Within that discussion issues associated with the changing of the policy was clearly defined. We believe this issue is quite important and should be thoroughly discussed.
  • JNFL's business is based on community understanding and trust, which have been built for over a quarter of a century since the original siting application was filed in 1984. Support from the people of Aomori Prefecture has made it possible to accept spent fuels and low-level radioactive waste from nuclear power stations from across the nation, and also temporary storage of high-level radioactive waste returned from overseas. We believe this has lead to facilitating the stable supply of electricity generated with nuclear energy. At the meetings of the Nuclear Framework Developing Committee in 2004, it was stated that considerations should be given to implications that would seriously undermine the trust of local communities, and it would bring the critical situation such as possible loss of anticipated sites for accepting nuclear waste. We fear that if the changes were to be made in the Nuclear Policy, the impact would be very serious.
  • Considerations must also be given to the increase of cost burden resulting from policy changes such as the use of thermal power for alternative power generation.