The result could set back Japanese plans for the use of thousands of kilograms of plutonium extracted from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from this and other Japanese nuclear reactors currently stored in Europe. The Tokyo based Citizens' Nuclear Information Center is now calling on the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company to respect the opinion of local residents, and cancel the use of MOX fuel at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 3. Japan's original plan was to extract plutonium by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, and use the plutonium as fuel for fast breeder reactors. But the development of fast breeder reactors came to a standstill following the sodium leak and fire at the Monju prototype fast breeder in 1995. Despite this failure and nuclear accidents in the late 1990s at Tokai, the center of Japan's domestic nuclear research and waste handling operations, the reprocessing of Japanese spent fuel in England and in France has continued.
Japan now has a great deal of excess plutonium.
The Citizens' Nuclear Information Center estimates that as of the end of 1999, there were 27.6 tons of Japanese plutonium stored in England and France, and 5.3 tons stored domestically. The MOX fuel program has been presented by the government as the sole option for consuming this plutonium. The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa fuel is the third batch of MOX fuel to be shipped to Japan and then rejected for use. The 28 assemblies of MOX, containing around 220 kilograms of plutonium, arrived on the British Nuclear Fuels vessel Pacific Pintail in March after a 30,000 kilometer voyage protested by environmental groups and many countries en route. In 1999, a shipment of MOX fuel from British Nuclear Fuels arrived in September under suspicion that BNFL workers had falsified quality control data.