Electric Power Development Co. (J-Power) President Masayoshi Kitamura said Thursday that the company will submit its application to the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority for safety screenings to start operations for the world's first all-MOX fuel plant, which is under construction in Oma, Aomori Prefecture. The application will be submitted before the end of the year, he said.
The plant is one of several under construction in Japan, despite the nationwide shutdown of 48 plants that were idled in reaction to the March 2011 earthquake that devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on the north-eastern portion of Honshu – Japan's largest island.
Reactor 1 at a Tokyo Electric Power Company plant in Aomori Prefecture was also under construction when the earthquake struck. Aomori is the most northern prefecture on Japan's Honshu island. Also under construction is the Chugoku Electric Power Company's No. 3 reactor at the Shimane Nuclear Power Plant in Matsue on the Sea of Japan coast. But these two plants are not ready to apply for safety screenings.
The plants under construction today in Japan were all begun prior to the earthquake. While attention is focused on the idled plants that were in operation in 2011 and are attempting a comeback with safety upgrades, it gets forgotten that construction of new plants was also affected by the event.
The all-MOX fuel Oma nuclear power plant was 40 percent completed in March 2011. MOX, which stands for mixed oxide, is a blended fuel. It is considered more difficult for fission control rods to suppress chain reactions of MOX fuel compared with conventional uranium fuel, The Asahi Shimbun said. As such, the Oma plant, which will be the first of its kind in the world, may be subjected to intensified scrutiny during screenings.
“No full MOX facility has so far gone online around the world. We will examine extremely carefully,” said NRA Chairman Shunichi Tanaka at a recent news conference.
The plant will have larger neutron-absorption boric acid water tanks. It will also upgrade earthquake safety from 450 gals to 650 gals. A gal, short for Galileo, is a measure of seismic acceleration during earthquake events.