Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority has granted an operating licence for an off-site interim dry storage facility for used nuclear fuel in Mutsu, Aomori prefecture. It is the first such facility in the country.
The Recyclable Fuel Storage Centre has been constructed by Recyclable-Fuel Storage Company (RFS) - a joint venture of utilities Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and Japan Atomic Power Company (JAPC).
Tepco and JAPC formed RFS in November 2005 and in March 2007 it applied to the Japanese government for a licence to construct the facility. In August 2010, the joint venture announced that it had received approval from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry for the design and construction of the Recyclable Fuel Storage Centre (RFSC). A groundbreaking ceremony for the facility was held that same month.
Construction work of the initial storage building was eventually completed in August 2013. However, in December 2013, new safety standards for nuclear fuel cycle facilities based on the lessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi accident were introduced by Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA). RFS was required to conduct further assessments for the facility's ability to withstand earthquakes, tsunami, volcanoes and tornadoes. The company submitted its initial design and construction programme document to the NRA in March 2016 and the regulator approved its safety plans for the facility on 11 November 2020.
The facility will store the highly radioactive fuel assemblies from the utilities' boiling water and pressurised water reactors in dry storage casks for up to 50 years until they are reprocessed at the Rokkasho plant, under construction about 50 kilometres away. A mix of recovered uranium and plutonium oxides - where the plutonium is never separated - would then be recycled into fresh mixed-oxide nuclear fuel at the J-MOX nuclear fuel manufacturing plant, alongside Rokkasho.
The RFSC was originally expected to begin operating in July 2012 with an initial capacity of 3000 tonnes of used fuel. RFS plans to later increase this capacity to 5000 tonnes.
RFS applied to the NRA for a pre-use confirmation of the Recyclable Fuel Storage Centre on 10 February 2022.
The NRA today said: "It was confirmed that the pre-operation operator inspection was properly conducted, and that the construction was carried out in accordance with the approval of the design and construction plan and conformed to the technical standards." It accordingly issued a pre-use confirmation certificate to RFS enabling operation of the facility to begin.
"We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the people of Aomori Prefecture, including Mutsu City, for their great understanding and cooperation since Mutsu City requested us to conduct a site feasibility study in 2000 and then invited us to host the facility," Tepco said in a statement. "We believe that the interim storage business for spent fuel is important and effective from the perspective of expanding the storage capacity of spent fuel, providing flexibility to the operation of the entire nuclear fuel cycle, and contributing to medium- to long-term energy security."
It added: "We will continue to support RFS so that they can proceed with their interim storage business with safety as their top priority."
On 26 September, Tepco announced that 69 used fuel assemblies from unit 4 of its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture had been transported to the Recyclable Fuel Storage Centre.