Japan says no leak at reactor after nearby fire
Date: 02-Nov-01
Country: JAPAN
The fire was put out at about three hours after it started at a maintenance facility near the Joyo experimental fast-breeder reactor in Ibaraki Prefecture, the JNC said yesterday.
"Monitoring equipment around the site has not shown any irregularly high readings of radioactivity...and we are investigating the cause of the fire," a spokesman for state-run JNC. There were no injuries in the incident.
Parts and equipment from the reactor are taken to the building for repairs, the spokesman said.
Joyo, in the process of having its capacity increased to 140 megawatts from 100 megawatts, is one of three experimental reactors run by JNC, none of which is currently operating.
JNC is spearheading the nation's fast-breeder reactor programme - a technology first conceived in the 1960s with the objective of using plutonium recycled from uranium fuel.
Most Western countries have abandoned similar programmes due to technical difficulties and costs.
France, which depends roughly 75 percent on nuclear power for its electricity, closed its Superphenix fast breeder in 1998.
Nuclear energy supplies about a third of Japan's electricity needs, and the nation has stuck to its fast breeder programme.
ACCIDENTS STALKS JNC
Wednesday's fire was the latest in a string of incidents to hit JNC's development efforts.
The company's prototype fast-breeder reactor Monju, at Tsuruga, 400 km (250 miles) west of Tokyo, has been shut since it suffered a massive sodium coolant leak on December 8, 1995.
The spokesman said yesterday that JNC was working towards restarting Monju but no timetable had been set.
An accident at JNC's Fugen advanced thermal reactor on April 15, 1997, leaked radioactive tritium.
The reactor, which is also undergoing maintenance, is due to be scrapped after operations are halted in 2003.
These accidents and others, one of which resulted in the death of two workers at a nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in 1999, have increased public distrust of the nuclear industry and undermined Japan's efforts to build more nuclear reactors.
