Japan’s Kansai Electric Power Co has told Fukui Prefecture that it plans to build air-cooled dry storage facilities at NPPs in the prefecture to temporarily store used fuel. The company will begin operation of an interim storage facility in around 2030, according to a plan presented by Hitoshi Mizuta, head of the company's nuclear power division, to Fukui Vice Governor Yasuhiro Nakamura.
Kansai Electric also showed a plan to transfer used fuel to the reprocessing plant under construction in the village of Rokkasho in Aomori Prefecture, in fiscal 2026 or later. It would also incease the amount of used fuel to be shipped to France for reprocessing, in line with its basic policy of not expanding dry storage capacity. "It's a step forward," Fukui Governor Tatsuji Sugimoto told prefectural assembly members after the Mizuta-Nakamura meeting.
However, Sugimoto said Kansai Electric and the central government must continue their efforts to ensure that a sufficient amount of fuel is removed from Fukui and that he would confirm whether Kansai and the government intended to revitalise municipalities that hosted NPPs and would resolve local issues there.
Image courtesy of The Jiji Press
