Twenty-five-year experience of industrial-scale plutonium utilization in the fugen nuclear power station

Advanced Thermal Reactor (ATR) is capable of using a wide variety of fuel types, and the main purpose for its development was to provide Japanese nuclear power station with a means of utilizing recycled plutonium produced in domestic nuclear power stations. In this way, we have intended to utilize imported natural uranium effectively. The prototype ATR - the Fugen Nuclear Power Station (NPS) attained the first criticality in 1978 and has been operated safely and reliably throughout twenty-five years, demonstrating the soundness of this concept and the quality of the basic design of this reactor. In the early cores of the Fugen NPS, the plutonium came from reprocessed fuel in overseas countries and then from Japanese conventional thermal reactors program. In July 1988, the MOX fuel, which contains plutonium recovered from Fugen's own spent MOX fuel, was reloaded into the core. It demonstrates the complete nuclear fuel cycle in Japan. Since the initial core, 34% to 72% of the fuel used in the core has been MOX fuel, and to date - December 2002 the total of 772 MOX fuel assemblies have been loaded, which is probably the largest number of fuel assemblies utilized at any single thermal neutron reactor in the world, equivalent to 1.85 metric tons of plutonium and 1.36 metric tons of fissile plutonium. Through these pioneering works on utilization of MOX fuel until March 2003, the Fugen NPS has markedly contributed to the development of Japanese long-term energy policy and peaceful utilization of plutonium. (author)