Japan's electric power industry has begun to establish a nuclear fuel cycle through Japan Nuclear Fuel, Ltd. (JNFL), a private venture led by the nation's nine electric utilities. JNFL is now the organization leading the way in the creation of Japan's closed nuclear fuel cycle. The company headquarters are in Aomori City in Japan's northern Aomori Prefecture, and the majority of its facilities are at the Rokkasho Village site. An interim storage center is also being considered at a site in Mutsu City north of Rokkasho.

JNFL is making steady progress in the construction of its reprocessing plant, which forms the core of nuclear fuel cycle facilities in Rokkasho. As of the end of January 2003, construction work was 93 percent completed. In October and November 2000, prior to receiving any spent fuel at the facilities, JNFL concluded an agreement with local public authorities dealing with the safety of local citizens and protection of the area's environment. This agreement represents a great leap forward for the reprocessing business. JNFL's reprocessing plant is due to begin operation in 2005, and the reprocessing capacity of the plant will be 800 tons of uranium per year. This is equivalent to the capacity to reprocess the spent fuel from thirty 1,000-MW-class nuclear power plants.

Spent fuel receiving and storage facilities, both part of the reprocessing center, have already been completed since 1998. As of January 2003, a total of 3, 360 spent fuel assemblies, containing approximately 779 tons produced by both BWR-type and PWR-type nuclear power plants, have been safely transported to the spent fuel receiving and storage facilities.

JNFL also owns and operates a large-scale uranium enrichment plant located at its Rokkasho site. The enrichment plant was completed in 1992 and has an operating capacity of 900 ton SWU (separated work unit) per year.

There is also a large low-level radioactive waste (LLW) disposal center at the JNFL site in Rokkasho. This is Japan?s central low-level waste disposal center. Following on-site storage, LLW is shipped here from individual nuclear power plants throughout the country. As with the uranium enrichment plant, the LLW disposal center has been operational since 1992. It is comprised of two facilities with a total authorized capacity of 200,000 m³ (equivalent to 1 million waste drums), and there are plans to triple this total capacity in the future. As of January 2003, Disposal Facility 1 had received 134,583 drums and Disposal Facility 2 had received 13,488 drums.

Vitrified waste is processed in Europe, transported back to Japan, and stored at the high-level vitrified radioactive waste storage center at the Rokkasho site of JNFL. Once the JNFL reprocessing plant begins operation, high-level waste from here will also be vitrified and sent to the nearby storage facility. Vitrified waste will be stored at this central storage center for between 30 and 50 years, after which time a long-term underground disposal plan will be implemented. As of January 2003, there are 616 canisters of vitrified waste already stored at the facility.

The business of fabricating unburnt uranium and plutonium recovered at the reprocessing plant into plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel represents one of the most important steps in nuclear fuel cycle operations.

After conducting a series of studies, JNFL and the Japanese electric power companies concluded that it would be commercially feasible to conduct MOX fabrication business in terms of technology, safety measures, reliability and economics. In November 2000, JNFL decided to become the central entity responsible for the construction of a MOX fabrication plant in Rokkasho. Plans are to connect this plant and the reprocessing plant with an underground tunnel so that MOX powder can be transported safely and economically, facilities can be used jointly, and reprocessing technology can be utilized effectively. The planned MOX fabrication plant will have a processing capacity of 130 tons a year; thus all the MOX powder recovered at the reprocessing plant can be processed, even in the event of possible future fluctuations. The MOX plant is expected to begin operations in 2008-2009.

Spent fuel is currently stored in storage pools at individual nuclear power plants. However, at the present rate, these storage pools will reach capacity in the near future. Therefore, Japan?s utilities foresee a need to construct an off-site facility in which spent fuel can be properly stored and managed until it can be reprocessed. In November 2000, Mutsu City, Aomori Prefecture (near Rokkasho Village), asked the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to carry out a field survey to examine whether an interim storage facility could be constructed in the city. TEPCO is now considering plans to bring an interim storage facility into operation by around 2010. If 500 spent fuel casks — extremely reliable steel containers capable of safely and hermetically sealing spent fuel, removing heat, shielding radiation and preventing criticality -- are to be stored in this facility, it is estimated that the facility will require a 100,000-square-meter site. Upon completion of an interim storage facility, increased flexibility will be achieved within the entire nuclear fuel cycle.