May 31, 2012

Monthly Press Conference

Today, President Kawai held a monthly press conference in Aomori City and talked about "Status of work for recovering the discharge flow in System B of the glass melter" and the "Evaluation of the New Nuclear Framework Developing Committee's policy options for the nuclear fuel cycle"

"Status of work for recovering the discharge flow in System B of the glass melter"

  • The "Causes of and countermeasures against degradation of discharge flow during operation confirmation of System B of the glass melter" (published on May 21) sets out main countermeasures as follows:
    — Introduce gradual temperature changes during the startup and shutdown of the glass melter in order to reduce the amount of brick particles to be generated.
    — Clear the glass melter of glass materials when starting up as having glass materials during the heating process encourages the chipping of bricks.
    — Remove all the glass materials from the melter after shutdown, as a general rule.
  • Future schedule
    The heating operation for the melter, which started in May 21, is in progress with careful attention paid to various parameters including the furnace temperature. Once it is completed, simulated glass beads will be fed to the melter to check the discharge and operation status, in reflection of the previous discharge issues. If the checks goes smoothly, without any problem, we intend to start the preliminary verification test around mid to late June.

"Evaluation of the New Nuclear Framework Developing Committee's policy options for the nuclear fuel cycle"

  • Our stance is that the government should adopt the "full reprocessing" scenario.
  • In regard to the evaluation criteria of "economy", "full direct processing" is the cheapest option in terms of the total cycle cost, as identified by the Policy Advisory Committee in 2004. However, this estimation does not fully reflect the inevitable costs associated with policy changes.
  • In the event of policy change, the volume of spent fuel to be returned to each of the nuclear power stations would exceed their respective storage capacity, forcing the plants to shut down their operation. What would be the alternative source of electricity then? The use of fossil fuel to generate power could incur a massive cost in excess of around 20 trillion yen. Yet, no legitimate debates are done on this matter.
  • Japan's energy policy has been made possible thus far with the extended cooperation from the people of Aomori Prefecture, which could not have been built overnight. The energy policy has been established on the premise of "full reprocessing".
  • With the expansion of the use of nuclear energy throughout the world, Japan is expected to make international contributions as the only country that has advanced nuclear power technology and nuclear fuel cycle technology for strictly peaceful use. This perspective must be maintained when evaluating and examining the nation's nuclear policy. The government should firmly maintain nuclear reprocessing as part of the national energy policy.
  • While the Energy and Environment Council seems to be setting a policy direction, we strongly hope that any future debates will present all information that helps the public make the right decision including the cost of policy change and aspects that cannot be measured with cost alone (sentiments of nuclear site communities) for a calm and practical review of the situations for a better future of the nation.