On Friday September 8th Japan's ailing nuclear industry made a collective lunge at a lifeline from George Bush. Eleven nuclear industry players submitted a joint response to the US Department of Energy's (DOE) request for expressions of interest (EOI) in its Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). They hope that GNEP will be just the lifeline that Japan's troubled nuclear fuel cycle and fast breeder reactor programs desperately need. More likely, however, time will show that they were clutching at straws.
The EOI relates to two GNEP programs, the "Consolidated Fuel Treatment Center" (CFTC) and the Advanced Burner Reactor (ABR). Joint bidders include Japan's leading nuclear research agency, Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing facility owner, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd (JNFL), and Japanese nuclear plant makers Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Toshiba and Hitachi.
It is difficult to imagine how Japan could play a constructive role in GNEP, given that the reprocessing technology it uses is French technology and that this technology is recognized to be a major proliferation risk. Furthermore, its fast breeder technology has been plagued by accidents and delays and is a major proliferation risk in its own right.
DOE has been chopping and changing its GNEP plan. Clearly it doesn't know what it wants. It has opened this EOI up for all comers to offer whatever they like. This shows that GNEP is really just a public relations ploy for an industry suffering from major credibility problems. GNEP will not solve the problem of nuclear proliferation. Nor will it solve the problem of what to do with nuclear waste. However, by lulling the public into a false sense that these problems can be solved, GNEP's promoters hope to gain funding and buy breathing space, before the industry collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.
Japan's involvement in GNEP, far from solving the problems of nuclear energy, is more likely to further undermine any spurious claims that might be made for GNEP. Rather than participating in GNEP, Japan should address the problems nuclear power and the nuclear fuel cycle have created at home, and invest in non-nuclear alternatives---energy conservation, efficiency, and sustainable, renewable energy.
See also the following previous media releases:
Lessons the G8 Can Learn from Japan: the Nuclear Fuel Cycle is an Economic Failure Providing no Energy (Media Release by CNIC and Green Action, 14 July 2006)
Global Nuclear Energy Partnership and Japan (Statement by CNIC and Green Action, 11 July 2006)
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