France’s Orano has signed an agreement with the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) to prepare shipments to France of 731 used fuel assemblies from the Fugen experimental Advanced Thermal Reactor (ATR) at Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture in Japan.
Orano will conduct all the technical preparatory works for the shipments of 111 tonnes of nuclear materials to be carried out between 2023 and 2026. The contract includes the design and manufacture of a fleet of transport casks conforming to national and international nuclear safety and security regulations. The agreement also envisages studies to be carried out before the acceptance and recycling operations for the used fuel at the La Hague plant.
The 165MWe Fugen pressure tube type ATR was heavy water moderated and boiling light water cooled, and used mixed oxide (Mox) uranium and plutonium fuel. Fugen operated from March 1979 to March 2003, and its decommissioning programme was approved in February 2008. Until 2006, its fuel was reprocessed at JAEA's Tokai reprocessing plant in Ibaraki prefecture, which operated from 1981 until 2006 when a contract for reprocessing used fuel from commercial power reactors came to an end. JAEA in 2014 decided to shut down the plant citing the cost of safety modifications required by the more stringent post-Fukushima regulations.
