Then why were there over 11,500 spent fuel rods at the Fukushima plant? Is the cost prohibitive?
Japan does have fuel reprocessing; I’m vaguely remembering that the Fukushima plant used mixed oxide fuel; maybe that isn’t what their reprocessing plant is made for? I dunno. I do know that fuel reprocessing reclaims something that was going to be thrown away that still has a great deal of energy in it.
Japan has recently built a facility to remove the byproducts and reprocess the plutonium and uranium into a substance called MOX for reuse in its reactors.
This was done in part to reduce the amount of spent fuel that is kept onsite at nuclear plants.
Japan’s reprocessing plant, in Rokkasho, a village 300 miles (500 kilometers) north of Fukushima, is only starting up, and hasn’t yet begun full operation.
Japan started to use MOX in some of its reactors to learn how it affects plant operations. In general, MOX fuel runs hotter than uranium oxide while inside the reactor.
The United States does not reprocess fuel and encourages other countries not to do so because of fears that plutonium recovered in the process could be used to make nuclear weapons.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_japan_earthquake_plutonium
Do you have a source for that information? That's allot for even 6 units. And the Japanese do reprocess fuel. The reason unit 4 had so many problems is because it's entire core was off loaded at the time of the accident so much of the fuel stored there was relatively new fuel.