Japan [National Strategies for Fuel Recycling]

Prior to the Fukushima Daiichi accident, 51.5 GW(e) of electricity in Japan was generated by nuclear power, equating to around 28% of the total electricity demand. This electricity was generated by the light water reactor (LWR) fleet of boiling water reactors (BWR) and pressurized water reactors (PWR). After the accident, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) announced that to restart NPPs, there was a requirement to clear an NRA safety assessment based on the safety guidelines in the NRA's New Regulatory Requirements of July 2013. As of March 2019, nine PWR units were operating. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) reported that there were 14 730 tonnes of SNF in wet and dry storage at Japan's power plants, filling about 71% of the existing storage capacity, as of September 2015. Around 2900 tonnes of SNF is stored in the Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd (JNFL) reprocessing plant. Most of Japan's utilities use plutonium as mixed oxide (MOX) fuel under the 'pluthermal' programme. MOX was initially planned to be used in 16–18 reactors in 2015, but currently there are only a couple of MOX fuelled PWRs in operation. The circumstances imposed by the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident led to a review of the nuclear energy policy. In April 2012, the Government announced that this review was to commence and would consider economic and other criteria in a range of different scenarios: direct disposal of SNF, and reprocessing and recycling. The Strategic Energy Plan of July 2018 outlines the basic policy of a closed nuclear fuel cycle where SNF is reprocessed and the recovered plutonium utilized to maximize the use of resources and reduce the volume of high level waste.