Tokyo, 27 September, /AJMEDIA/
A batch of spent nuclear fuel was delivered Thursday for the first time to an interim storage facility built in northeastern Japan as part of efforts to address increasing fuel stockpiles kept at nuclear power plants nationwide.
A total of 69 fuel assemblies from Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa complex in Niigata Prefecture arrived by ship and road at the facility in Mutsu, Aomori Prefecture, on the northernmost tip of Honshu, Japan’s main island.
The fuel has been placed inside a metal cask about 5.4 meters long and 2.5 meters in diameter that weighs 120 tons.
The storage facility in Mutsu is the only one in Japan not located on the premises of a nuclear power plant and is designed to store spent fuel for up to 50 years. The fuel is intended to be shipped out for recycling, but a reprocessing plant that has also been built in Aomori Prefecture is under a prolonged safety review.
The storage facility is operated by Recyclable-Fuel Storage Co, set up with joint investment from TEPCO and Japan Atomic Power Co. It plans to store up to 5,000 tons of fuel from the two companies.
Since the storage capacity of spent fuel at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant is approaching the limit, TEPCO plans to transfer two containers that can hold 138 fuel assemblies and five containers with up to 345 assemblies to the interim storage facility in fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026, respectively.
