US to partner Japan in push for next-generation nuclear technology

Name: Fukushima evacuees return home for first overnight stay in over 10 years since nuclear disaster
Uploaded: 2022-01-12T23:00:21.000Z
Duration: 1 min 50 s
Description: Fukushima evacuees return home for first overnight stay in over 10 years since nuclear disaster

Tokyo hopes to put the Fukushima disaster in the past with a new partnership aimed at developing plutonium-burning fast reactors and advanced SMRs

Driving its nuclear ambitions are both a need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and secure domestic energy sources in case of a geopolitical crisis

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Storage tanks at tsunami-crippled Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Japan is hoping to put the past behind it with a new push for nuclear power. Photo: EPA

Julian Ryall

Published: 7:00am, 13 Jan 2022Updated: 10:03am, 13 Jan 2022

Tokyo is embarking on a series of ambitious next-generation nuclear projects that could power Japanese industry for decades to come and go some way towards erasing the blot on its reputation caused by the Fukushima disaster.

A key element in the development of future nuclear energy technology will involve collaboration with scientists and companies in the United States, with Koichi Hagiuda, Japan’s minister of industry, holding talks with US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on January 6 and agreeing to cooperate in the development of plutonium-burning fast reactors and advanced energy plants based on small modular reactors (SMRs).

In its Sixth Strategic Energy Plan, unveiled in October, the Japanese government made it clear that it intends to move on from events in northeast Japan in the aftermath of the March 2011 magnitude-9 earthquake, which triggered a tsunami that caused the melt-down of three of the six reactors at the Fukushima plant.

Fukushima is rated as the second-worst nuclear disaster in history, after Chernobyl, and thousands of people are still unable to return to their communities to this day due to elevated levels of radiation in surrounding areas.

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Fukushima evacuees return home for first overnight stay in over 10 years since nuclear disaster

Nevertheless, in its outlook for the future, the government’s plan states that, “Stable use of nuclear power will be promoted on the major premise that public trust in nuclear power should be gained and that safety should be secured.”