The working group on nuclear wastes, organized under the nuclear energy
subcommittee of the electric power industry committee of the Ministry
of Economy, Trade and Industry’s Advisory Committee on Natural
Resources and Energy, restarted its discussions on May 28, 2013, after
a reshuffle of committee members. I was chosen as a member of the
working group. The main purpose of the discussion was to review the
government’s efforts concerning the final disposal of nuclear wastes.
The group held its second meeting on June 20, but its review policy
still remains unclear. This article will take up the development of the
situation pertaining to the final disposal of nuclear wastes and the
government’s efforts on this issue, which are to be reviewed by this
group.
In 1999, a law concerning the processing and
disposal of high-level nuclear wastes in Japan, the Designated
Radioactive Waste Final Disposal Act, was enacted. This was primarily
based on the geological disposal of high-level vitrified wastes. The
law provides that vitrified nuclear wastes are buried deep underground,
deeper than 300 meters from the surface, and calls for the
establishment of an organization in charge of procuring the necessary
funds and carrying out this disposal project. The law proposes that the
disposal site should be selected through an open application system.
This law was put into effect in 2000, the Nuclear
Waste Management Organization of Japan (NUMO) being established on the
basis of the law. NUMO is charged with selection of potential disposal
sites and the final disposal of nuclear wastes. In 2002, in accordance
with the law, NUMO called on 3,000 local governments across the nation
to apply for selection as host to a disposal site.
The selection of the disposal site will be conducted
in three stages. In the first stage, the districts for brief
investigation are chosen through bibliographic surveys. In the second
stage, sites for in-depth probing are selected and the overall
investigation of each site and its environment is conducted by using
exploratory boring and other methods. In the third stage, possible
construction locations for disposal sites are selected and detailed
investigations carried out by building the necessary underground
facilities.
NUMO presumed that the number of local governments
applying for selection to host a disposal site would total around ten,
of which two would be selected as the sites for detailed probes in the
third stage. In the final stage, one of the two sites would be chosen
as the final disposal site.
However, it would become necessary to use both sites
in the future if the use of nuclear power continues, although no one
talks about this possibility openly. The reason for this is that the
capacity of the disposal site is estimated at about 40,000 blocks of
vitrified nuclear waste, which is equivalent to the total number of
spent nuclear fuel rods that would be produced by the year 2020. This
means that two or more disposal sites would become necessary if the use
of nuclear power continues beyond 2020.
Nevertheless, no local governments applied even for
selection to host a site for brief investigation in the first stage. In
March 2007, it was revealed that the mayor of Toyo Town in Kochi
Prefecture secretly applied without obtaining consent from the town
assembly. The town residents stood up, called for a recall election,
and demanded enactment of an ordinance that would ban the entry of
nuclear wastes into the town. As a result, the mayor resigned, and the
recall election was held in April. The newly elected mayor withdrew his
town’s application. In the wake of this scandal, the then Governor of
Kochi Prefecture criticized the government’s nuclear energy policy. He
said the government cannot obtain local residents’ consent by
distributing money like water. The government promised to pay two
billion yen to each local government if it applied for selection to
host the disposal site. Originally, the central government set the
amount at 200 million yen, but increased the amount ten-fold to two
billion yen after it became clear that no local governments were going
to apply.
Following the scandal in Toyo Town, the central
government revised a relevant law to obtain the right to directly ask
local governments to apply for selection. The government was set to
implement the revised law and ask local governments to apply in 2011
when the nuclear disaster occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear
Power Station. The government was thus forced to suspend this move.
Meanwhile, the Japan Atmic Energy Council (JAEC) asked
the Science Council of Japan (SCJ) in September 2010 to deliberate on
the government’s efforts concerning the disposal of high-level
radioactive wastes. The main points of the deliberation were 1) how the
government should explain to the public, local governments that applied
or to which a direct request was made to apply for disposal site
selection, and how it should provide them with related information, and
2) to assign NUMO the task of presenting technical reports on this
project.
In response, SCJ set up a panel in September 2010
and commenced discussions on these issues. About six months later, the
nuclear accident occurred at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station
and the circumstances surrounding nuclear energy changed dramatically.
Reflecting this, the contents of the SCJ report on its discussions also
changed drastically.
SCJ has pointed out that there are three problems
involving the selection of the nuclear waste disposal site. 1) To try
to create a local community consensus for selection to host a
high-level radioactive waste disposal site without first creating a
national consensus on the nation’s nuclear power policy was going about
the matter in the reverse order. 2) Measures against possible,
extremely long-term radioactive contamination around the disposal site
should be devised. 3) Ways should be developed to narrow the wide gap
between the advantages to be enjoyed by the consumers in urban areas
and the disadvantages to be suffered by the residents in the
sparsely-populated district that ends up hosting the nuclear waste
disposal site.
Considering that the nuclear disaster in Fukushima was
caused by a massive earthquake, SCJ has come to the conclusion that the
basic assumption on which the traditional nuclear waste disposal
technology was developed has substantially collapsed. Thus it has
raised fundamental questions on the open application system for
selection of the nuclear waste disposal site and the disposal
technology itself. Based on these perceptions, SCJ has presented the
following six recommendations.
1. The conventional high-level radioactive waste disposal system should
undergo a drastic review (A national consensus on future energy policy
should be created first).
2. There is a limit to the government’s ability to predict major
earthquakes, the movement of geological strata, such as active faults,
and other types of disasters, and it is necessary to establish a
professional and independent panel capable of discussing such issues
openly.
3. A policy framework mainly concerning the “interim storage” of
nuclear wastes for periods from several tens of years to several
hundreds of years should be created, and “total-volume management” of
nuclear wastes (with two different meanings; one is determination of
the volume to be created, the other is reduction of the volume created
per unit of power generated) be carried out
4. Fairness should be secured in shouldering burdens involving nuclear waste disposal,
5. Discussion meetings should be organized to create a popular consensus on the multistage selection system, and
6. It is necessary to establish the awareness that this project requires tenacious long-term efforts.
JAEC received this report but refused to comply with
the recommendation that the total volume of nuclear waste to be stored
at the disposal site be set at a fixed amount. However, the government
took SCJ’s recommendations seriously. The result of this was the
establishment of the working group on nuclear wastes.
Although the government is taking the recommendation
seriously, it is shelving the procedure to create a national consensus
on energy policy (this is not part of the remit of the working group),
and is concentrating its efforts solely on devising new ways of
tackling high-level radioactive wastes. Under the current
circumstances, no matter how many times the government asks local
governments to apply for selection as a disposal site, its efforts
collapse due to strong opposition from local residents. Confronted with
this situation, the government seems to have gained the perception that
the first thing it has to do is to forge an environment where local
governments can apply more easily. This means that the government is
not moving to comply with recommendation 1 to review the reversed
procedure of the open application system. I will do my best to help
solve this problem. As things stand now, the working group has no
choice but to hold small-scale, insignificant discussions.
(Hideyuki Ban, Co-director of CNIC)
Return to
Radioactive Waste page
Return to
Nuclear
Policy index page
Return to NIT 155 contents
