Kansai Electric Power is working to double the amount of spent nuclear fuel it will ship to France, increasing it by about 200 tons, informed sources said.
The move comes as Fukui Prefecture, home to several nuclear plants, urges Kansai Electric to address shrinking storage capacity for spent nuclear fuel, the sources said.
In 2023, Kansai Electric announced a plan to ship about 200 tons of the fuel from its Takahama plant in Fukui to France starting in fiscal 2027. Based on the Japanese government's policy, the spent fuel will be used for research on technology to reprocess uranium-plutonium mixed oxide, or MOX, fuel.
At the Takahama plant, about 90% of the spent fuel storage capacity has already been used, and that amount is expected to reach the upper limit in about three years.
About 200 tons of spent fuel will be generated if the No. 1 to No. 4 reactors at the plant are operated for about three years. Kansai Electric has restarted all of its seven nuclear reactors.
The company initially planned to send spent fuel mainly to a reprocessing plant to be built in Aomori Prefecture, but the completion of the facility has been postponed.
Last September, the company notified Fukui Gov. Tatsuji Sugimoto of its intention to review the plan, and said that it would halt three reactors in the prefecture if it fails to come up with a proposal that can win the understanding of officials there by the end of fiscal 2024.
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