Japan has scrapped plans to generate electricity at a multibillion-dollar experimental nuclear reactor, the government said yesterday, giving up on the decades-old project due to spiraling costs.
Once touted as a “dream reactor,” the Monju Nuclear Power Plant was designed to generate more fuel than it consumes via nuclear chain reaction, an attractive alternative in a country with few natural resources.
However, its complex fast breeder reactor technology has been plagued with problems that have left it idle for more than a decade. It has also been a financial black hole since construction began in 1986, given its initial ￥1 trillion (US$8.51 billion at the current exchange rate) construction cost and daily operating costs of ￥50 million, even while shut down.
Photo: AFP
The government “will not restart [Monju] as a nuclear reactor and will take steps to decommission it,” Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Hirokazu Matsuno told the governor of western Japan’s Fukui Prefecture, where the facility is located.
Fukui Governor Issei Nishikawa, who was informed by Matsuno and Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Hiroshige Seko at a meeting, criticized the decision as “fast and sloppy.”
“I don’t think there were sufficient deliberations,” Nishikawa said.
Japan has become increasingly nervous about nuclear power in the years since the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster, the world’s worst such accident since Chernobyl in 1986.
While some local governors in Japan have opposed the restart of reactors, not all are opposed due to the economic benefits and jobs nuclear technology brings.
For example, the Fukui government has been cooperative, partly in return for financial rewards from Tokyo.
Despite the decision to scrap Monju, the government has not completely given up on fast breeder technology.
The area around the Monju facility is to be turned into a research center for nuclear technology, including plans to explore a different type of fast breeder reactor, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and technology said.
It is to remain “a long-term project” that will also involve cross-border joint research, it said.
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