UPDATE - Japan firm to stop MOX processing at COGEMA unit
Date: 28-Dec-01
Country: JAPAN
Kansai Electric Power Co Inc said COMMOX, an affiliate of state-run French nuclear agency COGEMA, had been asked to stop processing MOX fuel for the Japanese firm.
Kansai said the Japanese government had not been able to confirm if the MOX fuel produced at the French firm, which has been processing MOX for Kansai Electric since November 1999, was safe.
Officials at the power utility said the move could prompt a delay in the firm's plan to use the MOX fuel, as well as leaving the power utility with a loss of about six billion yen ($45.84 million).
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has stepped up quality inspections of MOX fuel in the wake of a data falsification incident involving British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) last year.
BNFL agreed last year to take back the fuel after Kansai Electric discovered accompanying data had been falsified.
"The government did not agree with our opinion that the fuel (produced at COMMOX) would have no safety problems," an official of the power utility told a news conference.
Kansai has not yet decided on possible future supply contracts.
No Japanese power plant has used MOX, despite industry plans to begin loading the fuel in 1999, partly due to strong anti-nuclear sentiment among the public.
The revelation that MOX data from BNFL had been falsified coincided with Japan's worst nuclear accident. In September 1999, an accident at a uranium reprocessing plant operated by JCO Co Ltd in Tokaimura, about 140 km (90 miles) northeast of Tokyo, killed two workers and exposed hundreds of residents to radiation.
The power industry, however, has said it will not abandon plans to use the controversial fuel.
Japanese power utilities still plan to load the MOX fuel at 16 to 18 nuclear reactors by 2010.
