What kind of nuclear reactors does japan use

However, this was destroyed in the accident. Construction of the two units was due to start later in and commissioning of the first was due in March NISA approved Kansai's long-term maintenance and management plan for the unit and granted a licence extension accordingly in June , which was then agreed by local government. In October Kyushu applied for a ten-year extension for Genkai 1, but in April all five of these were shut down.

Kyushu applied for a licence extension of Sendai 1 in December , and this with its ten-year ageing management plan was approved by the NRA in August It applied for Sendai 2 in November and this was approved 12 months later. Despite the approval for continued operation of Fukushima Daini 2, Tepco in July decided to decommission all four units at the plant. In January the NRA approved these issues being handled together with engineering work involved with Kansai meeting safety requirements for the restart of the two Takahama units.

Kansai applied for a year licence extension of Mihama 3 and if it had not been granted it was to be finally shut down in December In October the NRA approved a major works programme and in November granted the year licence extension, to In June Kansai confirmed its plans for upgrading the reactor by to take it to 60 years. The required work was completed in September Kansai applied for a ten-year cold shutdown of Takahama 2 to defer any decision on its future beyond its 40th anniversary in , and in April the NRA approved a ten-year licence extension for it.

The NRA confirmed that they meet new safety standards, with seismic rating upgraded to Gal, and in June the NRA approved licence extension to 60 years, the first units to achieve this under the revised regulations.

In September Kansai announced that upgrade work on Takahama 3 was completed, allowing the unit to operate for an additional 20 years to a total of 60 years. The extension was granted in November Chugoku's Shimane 3 was to enter commercial operation in December , but this was delayed to March because control rod drives had to be returned to the manufacturer for modification and cleaning. The start-up date was then deferred until evaluation of the Fukushima accident could be undertaken.

Chugoku finished building a 15 m high sea wall in January , and then extended this to a total length of 1. With construction now almost complete, Chugoku in May sought permission from the local government to apply to the NRA for pre-operation safety assessment to enable it to start. Chugoku submitted its application to the NRA in August following local government approval.

Seismic rating of the unit is Gal. Construction of unit 1 was due to start in August for commissioning in , but was delayed by more stringent seismic criteria, then delayed again in , and commenced in September Seismic criterion is now Gal. J-Power in mid affirmed its intention to complete and commission the unit, and announced resumption of work in October. In September the company said that it planned to complete construction by the end of , and have it in commercial operation in It applied to the NRA for a safety review in December , and in aspects of the safety review were being negotiated with the NRA.

In September , J-Power announced that the screening process of post-Fukushima safety standards had taken longer than anticipated. J-Power expects that process to conclude in , delaying operation of the reactor until at least It would be able to consume a quarter of all domestically-produced MOX fuel and hence make a major contribution to Japan's 'pluthermal' policy of recycling plutonium recovered from used fuel.

Tepco struggled for two years with the loss of its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa capacity — nearly half of its nuclear total — following the mid earthquake. While the actual reactors were undamaged, some upgrading to improve earthquake resistance and also major civil engineering works were required before they resumed operation. Tepco undertook seismic upgrades of units 1 and 5, the two oldest, restarting them in In a one-kilometre southern seawall was constructed, but apparently some of this is on sediments and assumed Ss of Gal.

However the southern part of the site, with units , has proposed Ss of Gal. Units are rated Gal since January Work stopped after the Fukushima accident, though JSW started manufacturing major components in after the accident. In it was reported that it could not afford to proceed with Higashidori, and in December Tepco said it was seeking a partner to build and operate the plant. Tohoku's Higashidori 2 on the adjacent site as Tepco's was scheduled for construction start in , though the company has yet to decide whether to proceed.

The site is in Higashidori-mura, on the Pacific coast, near Mutsu on the eastern side of the Shimokita Peninsula in Aomori prefecture. The company is building a 2km seawall to protect the site. Modifying the two s units to current seismic standards would cost about double the above amount and be uneconomic. Hamaoka is the company's only nuclear site, though it said that it recognizes that nuclear needs to be a priority for both "stable power supply" and environment.

However, the shutdown of units in May by government edict for modification has set back plans. In December the NRA said that a fault zone directly beneath the existing Tsuruga unit 2 reactor operating since was likely to be seismically active, and in May it endorsed an expert report saying that the reactor poses a risk in the event of a major earthquake.

An international review group investigating the faults with a massive excavation concluded in that the faults were not active, but the NRA accepted another report in March saying that there was an active fault, making its restart unlikely. Kyushu Electric Power Co. The Ministry of Environment told METI that the project was "absolutely essential, not just for ensuring energy security and a stable supply of electricity In METI began the process of designating it a key power source development project.

Kyushu had expected to start construction in March , for commercial operation in December The small island community of Iwaishima a few kilometres away has long opposed the plant. In October Chugoku confirmed its intention to proceed and awaited a safety assessment from the NRA. In August the Yamaguchi prefectural government renewed a licence for Chugoku to reclaim land for the plant. In June it was reported that Chugoku Electric Power Co had changed the proposed start date of new reactor construction at Kaminoseki from July to January Chugoku has recently completed geological surveys at the site that have determined there has been no recent seismic activity in the area.

Tohoku Electric Power Co planned to build the Namie-Odaka BWR nuclear power plant from at Namie town in Minami Souma city in the Fukushima prefecture on the east coast, but indefinitely deferred this project early in Most of this capacity was to be nuclear. Early in Chubu Electric Co announced that it intended to build a new MWe nuclear plant by , with site and type to be decided. The Joyo experimental fast breeder reactor FBR has been operating successfully since it reached first criticality in , and has accumulated a lot of technical data.

It is MWt, and has been shut down since due to damage to some core components. The upper core structure had to be replaced, and this was completed in See also information paper on Japan's Nuclear Fuel Cycle. The MWe Monju prototype FBR reactor started up in April and was connected to the grid in August , but a sodium leakage in its secondary heat transfer system during performance tests in December meant that it was shut down after only days actual operation, until May This was retrieved in June and replaced with a new one, allowing potential restart.

METI confirmed early in that Monju's seismic safety under new guidelines was adequate, and NSC approved its restart and operation for a three-year period, prior to "full operation" in However, in November the NRA called for the ministry to find a new owner and operator for Monju, due to failure of safety checks. The Fukui governor reminded the panel that Monju was positioned in the national Strategic Energy Plan to become an international research base for studies on waste volume reduction, the mitigation of danger, and other improvements to technologies related to nuclear non-proliferation.

In December the government confirmed plans to decommission it, despite Fukui local government being adamantly opposed to this. Originally in s the concept was to use fast breeder reactors FBRs burning MOX fuel, making Japan virtually independent regarding nuclear fuel. This evidently remains the plan: a demonstration breeder reactor of MWe by , and commercial MWe units by In JNC initiated a program to review promising concepts, define a development plan by and establish a system of FBR technology by Since the oil crises of and , Japan has diversified energy sources by introducing nuclear energy as well as liquefied natural gas LNG and coal.

Nuclear is an outstanding power source for mitigating global warming. He said he was concerned about a lack of transparency and the use of subsidies to sweeten local opinion to get the necessary restart approval. A giant earthquake off the northeast coast of Japan in March spawned a tsunami that killed more than 15, people and knocked out cooling at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station.

Explosions rocked the site as reactors melted down, causing huge clouds of radioactive matter to scatter over land and sea. Lax oversight allowing Tokyo Electric to downplay tsunami risks was one of the failings highlighted in the crisis.

Bureaucrats from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry METI , which supports nuclear energy to power Japan's industrial economy, went to Fukui prefecture times over a two-year period until early this year.

The visits to Fukui by officials including the head of the powerful natural resources agency were raised at a recent hearing of the parliamentary committee. A subsidy of 2. The challenge of maintaining nuclear technology marks the ten-year anniversary of the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. China and Russia in the international nuclear market and the proliferation of nuclear technology In Japan, a total of 24 reactors, including six at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, are set to be decommissioned[ 5 ].

Table 1, Global nuclear reactor export trends Source: Based on start of construction. The significance of maintaining basic nuclear technology and human resources Both China and Russia cooperate with IAEA safeguards, and their growing presence in the global nuclear market is not directly linked to proliferation risks.

Japanese 3 Tokai University, the first in Japan to offer a nuclear engineering major, plans to abolish its nuclear engineering department by fiscal Japanese 4 A system in which uranium that has not undergone nuclear fission, newly created plutonium and other resources are recovered for reuse from nuclear fuel that has been used in nuclear power generation. Japanese 9 As of October , countries, including Japan, are parties to the Additional Protocol.

Japanese 10 Ibid. List of Articles U. New Article. Oct 28, Security? Sep 22, Japan as a contributor to the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific [1].