Japan's Spent Fuel Management Problems: Before and After Fukushima Accident

The operation of Rokkasho reprocessing plant has been postponed till 2012 for repeated serious technical problems. In total, 13,530 tons of spent nuclear fuel is stored in the 20,420 tons total capacity storage pools at the nuclear power plant sites as of September 2010. As 1,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel is generated annually, the storage pool will be filled up within about six years, and though there are several countermeasures being planned, such as re-racking, unless the storage problem is solved, eventually the operation of nuclear power plants would have to be stopped. Furthermore, spent fuel management has become even more complicated by the Fukushima accident. The possibility of introducing an on-site dry cask storage system has become questionable because of the Fukushima accident