New trends in the management of radioactive wastes in Japan

In the first two decades (1950's and 1960's) of Japan's nuclear history, the main radioactive wastes came from radioisotope utilization and were of low and intermediate level. A nationwide service network has been established to collect, process, and temporarily store these wastes in a Tokai repository. In the second stage (during the 1970's) nuclear power generation has grown to a level of 6000 MW(e) and is producing large quantities of low- and intermediate-level wastes. These wastes have been processed and temporarily stored at each station. To dispose of these in the sea and in the ground, a Nuclear Environment Conditioning Center is being established this year with economic support from electric power companies and related industries. It is planned to have new collaborative processing organizations in each field to handle the wastes from radioisotope utilization and nuclear fuel fabrication. A large quantity of high-level wastes is expected to be produced from reprocessing in the 1980's. Fundamental research and development work is going on and a national cooperative program has been discussed by specialists