Japan Eyes Hitachiomiya as Fifth Candidate Site for Nuclear Waste Repository

Japan has identified Hitachiomiya in Ibaraki Prefecture as a possible new site for the country’s final repository for high-level radioactive waste. The move would make it the fifth area considered for the initial survey needed to assess a potential location.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said the government must handle the selection carefully and steadily. He described the disposal of waste generated through nuclear power use as a national task that cannot be left to future generations.

The first stage, known as a document survey, examines existing records including earthquake safety data and takes two years. If a site advances, an outline survey involving underground drilling would take four years. A detailed survey conducted after building underground facilities would take another 14 years, making the full process last more than two decades.

The government wants as many areas as possible to enter the first stage. It says this would improve the chances of finding geologically suitable land and gaining local residents’ consent. Hitachiomiya appears on the government’s scientific characteristics map as an area likely to have favorable conditions. Its population is about 35,000, and the Tokai No. 2 nuclear plant lies within a 30-kilometer radius, where accident-response facilities and plans already exist.

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The selection of a final disposal site for high-level radioactive waste generated through the use of nuclear power is a national task that cannot be left to future generations.

The waste comes from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium and uranium. The remaining highly radioactive liquid is mixed with molten glass and cooled into solid glass cylinders weighing 500 kilograms and standing 1.3 meters tall. The radiation can be fatal within about 20 seconds at close range, and it may take up to 100,000 years to fall to safe levels.

Japan is expected to have about 27,000 such vitrified containers from material awaiting or already undergoing reprocessing. The planned repository would hold 40,000 containers in metal vessels, buried in bedrock at least 300 meters underground. The lack of a final facility has prompted comparisons to an apartment building with no toilet.

Three municipalities, in Hokkaido and Saga Prefecture, previously requested document surveys themselves. The government offers up to 2 billion yen to municipalities that accept the first stage and 7 billion yen if they proceed to the outline survey. Minamitorishima, a remote Tokyo island more than 900 kilometers into the Pacific, was the first area the government approached directly as it sought additional locations.

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It is important to proceed carefully and steadily to expand the areas carrying out the document survey, the first step in selecting a candidate site.