Fuel Removal from Monju Reactor Seen Starting Thurs.

August 29, 2018

Fukui- The head of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday that it will likely be able to start work Thursday to remove fuel assemblies from its Monju prototype fast-breeder nuclear power reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, central Japan.

JAEA President Toshio Kodama unveiled the prospect at a meeting with Fukui Governor Issei Nishikawa at the prefectural government office in the city of Fukui.

The agency plans to transfer a total of 530 nuclear fuel assemblies in the reactor and at a storage container filled with sodium as coolant outside the reactor to a water-filled pool by December 2022. The trouble-prone reactor has been in a decommissioning process

"As the Monju project was launched as a state program, it is a duty of the government-affiliated JAEA to accomplish the whole procedures to scrap the reactor," Nishikawa said, calling on the agency to carry out the mission surely and safely.

Kodama promised to visit the Monju site regularly, adding that he will work on the decommissioning process with a firm resolve.

Of the 530 fuel assemblies, 370 are in the reactor and 160 in the storage container.

Transfer work will begin with the assemblies in the storage container. The operator plans to relocate one assembly per day, hoping to transfer 100 assemblies to the water pool by the end of this year. Work to transfer the fuel assemblies in the reactor is expected to start in July next year.

The fuel removal and transfer is part of the first phase of the decommissioning process, which is expected to take 30 years to complete.

It is not clear whether the process will proceed as scheduled, however, because of expected difficulties involving the work.

After Monju reached criticality, a self-sustained nuclear fission chain reaction, for the first time in 1994, a sodium leak accident occurred at the reactor in the following year.

In 2010, several problems happened, including a fall of equipment for exchanging fuel into the reactor.

The Japanese government made a decision in 2016 to decommission the reactor, and the Nuclear Regulation Authority approved the JAEA's Monju decommissioning plan in March this year.

The JAEA initially planned to start removing the fuel assemblies late last month, but postponed the schedule to this month in the wake of a series of problems during final equipment tests.

Even during a final exercise from Aug. 19 to prepare for the fuel removal, the agency was forced to halt the drill on the first day as an alarm went off. Jiji Press