Local opposition to dismantling of Japanese fast (breeder) reactor

world-nuclear-news ^ | 19 December 2016 | WNN Staff

[Rabin]

Monju (Image: JAEA) A meeting was held today between representatives of Fukui prefecture to discuss the fate of the Monju reactor. The 280 MWe Monju FBR started up in 1994 but following sodium leakage problems operated for only 205 days… it restarted in May 2010 (but) has not operated since refuelling equipment fell into the reactor vessel during a refuelling outage later that year. The Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) has not yet permitted the reactor to restart… the NRA determined that operator JAEA was not competent to operate the reactor.

[Rabin]

In a separate meeting today, the government said it expects the decommissioning to take 30 years and cost more than JPY375 billion ($3.2 billion).

R.

[Axenolith]

Damn, they’re trying to perform like Russians without vast surplus surface area...

[wastedyears]

30 years?

[Robert A Cook PE]

Liquid sodium is nasty stuff.
USN tried it early on the first Seawolf reactor. After only a few months “operation” , gave up, swapped to a “conventional” liquid water reactor, and ran the sub for dozens more years safely.

[minnesota_bound]

The Japanese are clumsy

[VTenigma]

The Japanese really suck at nuclear stuff.