Nuclear fuel in Japan (En)

What is interesting to live outside the place you were born and grew up in is that you can observe what's going on there from an objective perspective. Myopia is what happens if you stay in a comfort zone too long. I was in Tokyo when the quake and the tsunami hit the North East coast of Japan, and what I experienced was that from the very moment that things started happening, everything became unclear. The media wasn't telling the true story of what was going on at the Fukushima power plant and the government as well. Therefore I relied most of the facts from CNN. I was surprised and impressed to see the CNN top anchor Anderson Cooper coming to ground zero as quick as within 24 hours after the first quake. He was honest with his own comments, and also trying to "keep them honest" as well. Anyhow, I am now in a position to observe what is happening in Japan regarding the nuclear power plants, and found an article in Bloomberg about the doomed situation of the nuclear policy in Japan.

Nowhere to use Japan's growing plutonium stockpile

This is amazing. Now Japan seems to be stuck in between many things and is going nowhere. Just let me highlight the points that will make the situation clearer.

There is a nuclear plant complex in a place called Rokkasho village which is literally on the north tip of the crescent shaped island of Honshu. The reprocessing facility in the complex, which is still under construction, is meant to become capable in extracting plutonium (Pu) and uranium from the nuclear waste that comes from the power plants all around the country. Although it is not commercially running at this point, about 3,000 tons of nuclear waste has already arrived and is sitting in the site waiting to be processed. It is already 30 years since the original construction plan launched; it will start running in 2014 allegedly.

The idea is to take out as much as possible from the limited resources and also to minimize the amount of waste, which is reasonable given the dense population and international dependency of natural resources in Japan. The concern is the amount of Pu coming out from the reprocessing operation. There is already 160 tons of Pu on the island as storage, and this will serve as enough source to create nuclear weapons, and the United States is seriously concerned about what will happen to this if Japan eventually abandons to use Pu, because of the two impediments;

1. The technical and physical failure to develop a power plant that consumes Pu containing nuclear fuel; conventional light-water reactors are only able to use Pu based fuel to a limited proportion and Japan was trying to construct a so-called "fast breeder" reactor that not only can use Pu as fuel but also can generate more Pu during the fissile process. With over a half century of R&D this has still not become commercially feasible in any part of the world including Japan, and the project named "Monju" is now virtually ceased after the multiple mishaps in 1995 and in 2010.
2. The public reluctance to continue any constructive activity around usage of nuclear power. Even if a fast breeder reactor doesn't come out in the near future, there are ways to generate power from Pu based fuel, which needs a certain equipment. There is another power plant under construction close to Rokkasho that can use high content of Pu, but this is now withheld due to the repugnance of the general public.

Therefore the Pu containing nuclear waste is coming to Rokkasho but is going no where. The grand plan seems to be in significant malfunction, and looks like "building an apartment without a toilet." The anxiety of US officials about the fate of the Pu is now swelling.

I cannot believe that this piece of information is disseminated and shared with the general public in Japan in a healthy way. The election won't work favorably in this kind of situation since it requires a long term decision while votes tend to gather around short term benefits.