Japan's NRA urges science minister to replace operator of troubled nuke reactor

Japan's nuclear regulator on Friday called for the nation's science minister to strip a government-backed agency from its duties running the trouble-plagued Monju sodium-cooled fast reactor located in Fukui Prefecture in the east of Japan, to increase safety under a new operator.

Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) has urged Hiroshi Hase, the minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology, to contemplate closing the troubled reactor down if a suitable replacement to operate it cannot be found.

While the NRA doesn't have the authority to order the government-backed Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) that operates the reactor located on the coast of the Sea of Japan following deliberations last week, it concluded that in line with its own enhanced safety regulations a new entity or operator should be charged with running the nuclear facility.

The unprecedented move by the NRA to persuade the science minister to either replace the JAEA or consider scrapping the reactor, came at a difficult time for the government who, under new energy guidelines and outlooks, is looking to bring the nation's reactors, idled in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns, back online.

Against popular public opinion about Japan's new energy policy, the government, under the stewardship of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has seen its trade deficit hugely impacted by the cost of importing fossil fuel for turbine reactors, compounded by a weak yen, and wants to recycle fuel used at nuclear power plants.

By reprocessing the fuel into mixed-oxide fuel, it can be reused at fast-breeder reactors like Monju's, which are capable of generating more fissile material than they consume. Fast breeder reactors gain their name for their ability to use fast unmoderated neutrons to breed fissile plutonium and possibly higher transuranics from uranium. The reactors can also breed fissile uranium from thorium.

But the Monju reactor has been beset with problems, some of which the NRA has found the government-backed JAEA to be responsible for.

In June last year, the JAEA said it would endeavor to raise its equipment inspection protocols and overall safety management procedures after it was banned from operating the facility in May 2013.

The ban was slapped on Monju's operation in May 2013 by the NRA after the watchdog found that around 10,000 pieces of equipment at the facility had not been adequately inspected by the operator.

One month later during further safety inspections, the NRA revealed that safety checks on another 2,300 pieces of equipment had been omitted by the JAEA.

Shinzo Saito, chief of the Monju facility told NRA representatives at the time that the JAEA will revise its operational protocols to better prioritize safety and do its utmost to follow revamped safety guidelines.

But the Monju facility has been plagued with problems since achieving criticality in 1994. Such problems included a sodium-detector and pipe cooling ventilator malfunction in February 2012 and an operating error in April 2013 that saw two of the plant's three emergency reactors become unstable.

In addition, in September 2013 the reactor's vital data transmission system stopped communicating with the government's Emergency Response Support System.

The JAEA's problems reached a peak, however, in November 2012 when the NRA realized that the plant's operator had omitted regular safety checks from reports, with further investigations confirming that inspections and intermittent safety checks had not been performed on some 10,000 out of almost 40,000 pieces of the plant's equipment before a previously agreed deadline.

Talks between the NRA, a senior official from the plant's operator and JAEA President Toshio Kodama, took place last week at the science ministry here to traverse possible solutions to the safety issues, prior to the NRA urging Hase to replace the JAEA as the reactor's operator or consider scrapping the plant entirely. Endit