France to send nuclear fuel to Japan
Japan is set to receive - in two months time - a shipment of nuclear fuel from France, the eighth in a little over two decades.
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Japanese workers dismount MOX shipments mounted on a vessel sent from France.
A shipment of reprocessed nuclear fuel docked in the early hours of Wednesday at the port city of Cherbourg in France, AFP reported, saying that the ship was bound for Japan to be used in a nuclear power plant.
Japan does not possess facilities that allow it to process its own nuclear waste, sending most of it overseas - France in particular.
The nuclear shipment, composed of highly radioactive Mox, a concoction of reprocessed plutonium and uranium, was transported overnight from a nuclear power plant in the Hague in secure containers mounted on two trucks, the Paris-based nuclear group Orano said.
The convoy arrived around 3:45 am local time at the port surrounded by law enforcement vehicles, the French agency added, citing a photographer at the location.
The load was transported a few hours later to a nuclear-ready ship designed by the UK's PNTL company, which has extensive experience with transporting this type of materials, Orano explained.
The ship will take around two months to dock at its destination in Japan, marking the eighth shipment of the sort from France since 1999.
The last time France sent out a ship bound for Japan and loaded with Mox was in September 2021, prompting environmental group Greenpeace to protest the transaction.
"Transporting such dangerous materials from a nuclear proliferation point of view is completely irresponsible," said Yannick Rousselet of Greenpeace France about Wednesday's shipment.
The concoction in question, Mox, is composed of 92% uranium oxide and 8% plutonium oxide, Orano said. "The plutonium is not the same as that used by the military," the company claimed.
Nuclear power is becoming more popular as countries look for alternatives with the cost of importing energy growing globally and climate crises causing devastation.
The Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011—the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986—led to a drop in nuclear power investment as governments ran terrified and safety concerns grew. However, the tide is now shifting back in favor of nuclear power after Moscow's operation in Ukraine, the ensuing squeeze on energy supplies, and Europe's push to wean itself off of Russian oil and gas.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida two weeks ago called for an initiative to restart the nation's nuclear power sector.
Kishida, at an energy policy meeting, said the war in Ukraine "has vastly transformed the world's energy landscape" and so "Japan needs to bear in mind potential crisis scenarios."
10 of Japan's 33 nuclear reactors are back in service 11 years after the nuclear disaster, albeit not all of them are, and the nation is still highly reliant on imported fossil fuels.
The restart of seven more reactors has received preliminary approval from the national nuclear safety watchdog, although local populations frequently oppose such actions.
