<\/a>Urgent Appeal: We Oppose the Restart of Monju<\/b><\/p>\nThe Monju Fast Breeder Reactor (FBR, Tsuruga City, Fukui Prefecture) is scheduled to restart operations during March, after being shut down as a result of an accident over 14 years ago. There are almost no examples world-wide of reactors being restarted after such a long shut down, and there are no such examples for FBRs.<\/p>\n
Monju’s owner, Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), claims that preparations are complete and the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC) has approved the restart. However, hardly any checks of coolant system piping, tests to detect non-penetrating cracks and holes in the steam generator heat transfer tubes, or studies of the integrity of fuel assemblies in the reactor core have been undertaken, so there is no knowing what defects might be lurking.<\/p>\n
In the course of preparations to restart Monju, it was discovered by accident, as a result of false alarms, that hundreds of contact-type sodium detectors had not been checked. Also, corrosion of the exhaust duct was left untreated. Problems such as these exposed the sloppy nature of the preparations and the restart date was extended on four occasions. There is no guarantee that other important checks have not been missed. Nor do we believe that organizational issues related to problem response, such as frequent late reporting, have been rectified. Many experienced people have left, giving rise to human resource problems. Under these circumstances it is dangerous to restart Monju. We believe there is a big risk of another accident.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the cost of constructing Monju is 5 times that of a light water reactor. For this reason, a totally different concept from Monju is being proposed for practical implementation. Monju is, therefore, no longer a prototype leading to practical implementation of FBR. Since Monju is very different from the envisioned commercial plant, it has very little value in terms of the operational objective of “demonstrating its reliability as a power generating plant”. It can hardly be essential for “mastering sodium handling technology”. The experimental reactor Joyo already exists for the purpose of “fuel and material irradiation experiments”. Even from the perspective of promoting fast breeder reactors the restart of Monju has no meaning.<\/p>\n
However, the most fundamental problems are that there is no prospect of commercializing fast breeder reactors anyway, and that by operating fast breeder reactors the most weapons-usable material, super-weapons-grade plutonium, can readily be produced and extracted.<\/p>\n
Development of fast breeder reactors was begun before other types of reactors, in the hope that by breeding plutonium an inexhaustible resource for the generation of electricity would be obtained. However, development encountered huge problems and after half a century FBRs have yet to be commercialized. Leaders in FBR development, the USA, the UK, France and Germany, all withdrew 20 years ago. The reasons were: (1) FBRs are much more dangerous than light water reactors; (2) there is no prospect of FBRs being economically viable; and (3) there is the risk that FBRs can readily be linked to the production of nuclear weapons. Russian and Chinese reactors are fast reactors, which use enriched uranium fuel and are unsuitable for breeding plutonium. France’s new program is a part of its program for dealing with radioactive waste and is unrelated to breeder reactors. The only countries which still retain the objective of using FBRs for resource or military purposes are Japan and India. We do not believe that Japan alone can succeed in the uncertain technology development task of commercializing FBRs, not even over a period of several decades. In the midst of severe national financial circumstances, Japan is confronted with numerous urgent social problems. Continuing to waste huge amounts of taxpayers’ money year after year in order to operate the dangerous and meaningless Monju Fast Breeder Reactor is totally unacceptable.<\/p>\n
For the above reasons, we strongly oppose the restart of Monju.<\/p>\n
March 11, 2010<\/p>\n
Signed by concerned scientists opposed to the restart of Monju<\/b>
\nNoriko Aikawa (formerly of Toyama University)
\nEiichi Arai (Emeritus Professor of Tokyo Institute of Technology)
\nKota Baba (formerly of Hiroshima Shudo University, Faculty of Human Environmental Studies)
\nToru Ebisawa (formerly of Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute)
\nIwane Fujii (Emeritus Professor of Meiji University)
\nYo Fujimura (Kanagawa Institute of Technology)
\nYukou Fujita (formerly of Keio University)
\nTakeo Hashizume (Kagoshima University)
\nTsutomu Hirose (formerly of Kumamoto University, Faculty of Engineering)
\nHiroaki Hosokawa (Kyoto Seika University)
\nTetsuji Imanaka (Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute)
\nHiromitsu Ino (Emeritus Professor, Tokyo University, Faculty of Engineering)
\nNorio Ishida (Kyoto Gakuen University, Faculty of Bioenvironmental Science)
\nShinji Kawano (Doshisha University, Faculty of Engineering)
\nShigeru Kino (Ritsumeikan University)
\nKeiji Kobayashi (formerly of Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute)
\nHiroaki Koide (Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute)
\nHiroo Komura (Shizuoka University, Faculty of Engineering)
\nHideyuki Koyama (formerly of Osaka Prefecture University, Faculty of Engineering)
\nHiroshi Miwa (Emeritus Professor of Shinshu University)
\nTaisuke Miyauchi (Hokkaido University, Faculty of Human Sciences)
\nMitsuhiko Ozaki (formerly of Osaka University, Faculty of Engineering)
\nSeung-Joon Park (Kyoto Sangyo University)
\nKiichi Shiratori (formerly of Kyushu University, Faculty of Science)
\nKenji Showaki (formerly of Kyoto University, Faculty of Engineering)
\nAtsushi Tsuchida (Meijo University)
\nKousaku Yamada (formerly of Kyoto University, Faculty of Science)
\nYukio Yamaguchi (Wako University)
\nTomoya Yamauchi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Press Release March 23, 2010 Monju Restart: Appeal by Japanese Scientists Japanese scientists concerned about the imminent restart of the Monju Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor issued a statement on March 11 this year. Citizens’...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monju","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2086,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2085\/revisions\/2086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cnic.jp\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}