Japan has 1,000 tons of spent fuel coming out of reactors every year, and there are 7 more years before the spent fuel pools are filled. Tokyo Electric Power Co is building a facility that will give us another 5 years, so after 12 years we have no place to put spent fuel.
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Taro Kono, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker and opponent of nuclear power. (Bloomberg)
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1
electric2004
And for how long has the LDP, where Taro Kono is a member ignoring this problem?
0
Utrack
Found and informative article on spent fuel rods.
Uses for Spent Nuclear Fuel Rods
http://www.ehow.com/about5453815uses-spent-nuclear-fuel-rods.html
2
ExportExpert
Just store the spent fuel rods in the President of Tepco's top draw in his desk, they'll be ok there if they don't tell anyone about it.
-1
mushroomcloudmaster
Again, Japan is one radioactive cesspool.
0
shinhiyata
According to the US Department of Energy, a typical spent fuel rod assembly containing 264 rods weighing 1450 lbs would contain 12.9 pounds of plutonium, and 1367 pounds of U-238. The plutonium can be used directly as nuclear fuel and the uranium can be reprocessed to produce additional fuel. However, reprocessing raises concerns about the production of fissile Pu-239 which can be used in nuclear weapons. So according to the NRDC, after 12 years and 12000 tons of spent fuel rods, Japan will have enough plutonium for over 2000 50kiloton warheads. Japan's science community certainly has the intelligence to quickly couple this with lithium deuteride and produce a thermonuclear weapon in the 3 megaton range. I think this is potentially as much of a problem as waste storage.
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