U.K. MOX plant closure to cost utilities billions

[Przerzucają się gorącym kartoflem „strat” finansowych - a o stratach życia i zdrowia ludzi - milczą. MD]

Kyodo Oct. 19, 2011 http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111019a4.html

LONDON — Japan's electric power industry has suffered multibillion yen losses due to the closure of a plutonium-uranium mixed oxide, or MOX, fuel plant in Britain, industry sources said Tuesday.

The nation's 10 utilities jointly bore the expenses for renovating the Sellafield-based plant, owned by the British government-affiliated Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, but the British side determined Japan would no longer need MOX fuel in light of the Fukushima No. 1 crisis, and has decided to close it, the sources said.

The utilities have spent billions of yen for the renovation to smoothly extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel discharged from commercial reactors in Japan for use as MOX fuel.

For security reasons, they had no other choice but to depend on Britain to produce MOX fuel. [Why?? MD]

Because the losses will eventually be passed on to consumers through higher electricity rates, the utilities, including Tokyo Electric Power Co., will be required to fully explain the situation to the public.

They had sent spent nuclear fuel to the Sellafield plant since 1969, but it has so far produced no MOX fuel for Japan due to a series of plant troubles.

The utilities accepted the closure, so they couldn't charge a penalty for breach of contract, according to the sources.

On Aug. 3, the NDP issued a statement that it "has been reviewing the future of SMP (Sellafield MOX plant) in the light of the impact on the Japanese nuclear industry of the tragic earthquake in March and the likely effect on the SMP program and associated commercial arrangements."

"The NDA board has now assessed the changed commercial risk profile for SMP arising from potential delays following the earthquake in Japan and subsequent events and has concluded that . . . the only reasonable course of action is to close SMP at the earliest practical opportunity," it said.