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Japan has redrawn its energy policy to reduce its reliance on plutonium and fast-breeder reactors. In a report to be released later this month, the Atomic Energy Commission in Tokyo says it will slow down the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium. Just how radical a change the new policy represents is still unclear. Antinuclear groups say it could mark the start of a retreat from an unpopular, uneconomic strategy, while the commission says it does not alter Japan’s long-term commitment to fast breeders.

Over recent months, Japan has changed individual aspects of its nuclear policy. For example, its prototype fast breeder, Monju, will be allowed to ‘breed’ more plutonium than it burns only during an early, experimental phase. The government has also postponed operation of the next prototype from the late 1990s to the early 2000s (This Week, 23 April).

The commission’s new strategy, which was previewed last week, formalises these changes and goes further. Where present policy calls for spent fuel to be reprocessed as soon as it is produced, the new plan is to store it and reprocess it only when needed. The new plan also states that, after 2030, fast breeders will no longer be the main power producers, but will hold an equal position with conventional light water reactors.

The revised plan estimates a demand for between 69 and 79 tonnes of plutonium by the year 2010, as opposed to 80 to 90 tonnes in the original plan. ‘In the new programme, the supply and demand are still balanced, but are reduced a little bit,’ says Yasutaka Moriguchi, director of the nuclear fuels division at the Science and Technology Agency. He stresses that the country’s first commercial fast breeder is still expected to be completed around 2030.

In recent years, Japan’s policy of generating electricity from fast-breeder reactors has looked increasingly out of step. Critics of Japan’s programme say the government might have a secret agenda for using surplus plutonium in nuclear weapons. North Korea cited Japan’s stocks of plutonium as a threat to its security. Moriguchi says the policy review is a way to deflect this criticism by minimising plutonium stockpiles. ‘We need to enhance the transparency of our activities so as not to arouse suspicions about nuclear weapons,’ he says.

At the Citizens Nuclear Information Centre, an antinuclear group in Tokyo, Yurika Ayukawa says that on the surface the government’s policy towards plutonium appears little changed, but this could be a way to save face. ‘I think there will eventually be a retreat,’ she says. ‘But the government doesn’t like to show it’s retreating.’