Today I would like to comment on two topics. One is the necessity of the nuclear fuel cycle. The other is changes in FEPC personnel.

First of all, to return to a subject I also discussed at our last press conference, I would like comment again on the necessity of the nuclear fuel cycle.

On April 28th, the Aomori prefectural authorities announced their decision to approve the resumption of acceptance of spent nuclear fuel, and their willingness to engage in a dialogue on a uranium-testing safety agreement in the future. Thanks to this response, acceptance of spent fuel at the Rokkasho Reprocessing Facility was restarted last week on June 3.

The FEPC sees this as an extremely significant development that will allow us to move forward with our reprocessing business and other nuclear fuel cycle businesses, and I would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to Governor Mimura and the people of Aomori Prefecture.

As you know, it was approximately 20 years ago, in 1984, that an application was filed to site the Rokkasho Reprocessing Facility in its current location, and construction is at last almost complete.

It has been a long process, and we have had to overcome many hurdles. It is entirely due to the understanding of the citizens of Aomori Prefecture that we have been able to come this far.

To put it another way, we cannot proceed with this project without the understanding of the people of Aomori. Furthermore, it is with their understanding that we are able to accept spent fuel from nuclear power stations throughout the country.

In other words, the acceptance of spent fuel at Rokkashomura, and the promotion of the fuel cycle, means nothing less than that we are able each day to ensure a stable supply of electricity from nuclear power.

The construction of a nuclear power plant first requires that an application for Nuclear Reactor Site Permission be filed, and I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that to be approved, the application must clearly state that spent fuel will be reprocessed.

To move nuclear power forward in this country, nuclear power plants and backend operations must work together like two wheels on an axle. If we are to move forward, both must work together.

Currently, our member companies are working to prepare interim storage facilities that will allow them to operate until 2010, but it is thanks only to reprocessing that these facilities can be called "interim."

Plutonium accounts for 1% of the spent fuel from nuclear power-generating facilities. With 1,000 tons of spent fuel currently being produced each year, this means that approximately 10 tons of plutonium are being produced in Japan each year. Plutonium has a long half-life, and will never simply disappear naturally, so it is necessary for us to handle this material responsibly.

More than 95% of spent fuel consists of reusable materials such as plutonium and uranium, and if these are reprocessed and put to pluthermal use, fuel-use efficiency will rise by approximately 25%. Compared to direct disposal, this also enables us to reduce the amount of radioactive waste that must be disposed of, and makes it possible to reduce the effects of radiation to a tenth of what they would otherwise be.

If, on the other hand, this material is disposed of directly, it means that the waste will contain plutonium, which generates a large amount of heat. This in turn means that disposal sites must be large, and that it will be an extremely long time before radiation at the sites declines. It will also require us to address many technical issues relating to the various measures we will need to implement to minimize the effects of radiation over a long period of time.

Those of us who promote nuclear power will never take the irresponsible course of leaving future generations to deal with the problems that will result if we take "the easy way out" and only use natural uranium 235. We consider it our duty to recycle the uranium 235 we use in this generation to reduce as much as possible the burden imposed on the environment and on future generations.
We therefore believe that reprocessing is the only suitable choice for our nation.

These, then, are the points I wanted to make today to explain from a realistic standpoint the necessity of the nuclear fuel cycle, in particular the start of operations at the Rokkasho Reprocessing Facility.
As I said last month, we will not retreat from our commitment to move forward on an industry-wide basis to begin operations at the Rokkasho Reprocessing Facility.

I sincerely request the understanding of all Energy Press Club members with regard to this matter.

I would now like to report on changes in Federation of Electric Power Companies personnel, details of which are shown in the reference materials.

Retiring Vice-Chairman Isami Kojima will be succeeded by Tokyo Electric Power Company Vice-President Teruaki Masumoto, and retiring Senior Managing Director Ryuichi Hamada will be succeeded by Director Norihisa Ito of Chubu Electric Power Company. Both of these personnel changes were unanimously approved at this morning's General Policy Committee meeting.

An overview of the new FEPC executive management structure is shown at the bottom of the reference material.