Japan;s Most Dangerous Reactor Could Dwarf Fuku

The plant, a $12 billion project, has a history of safety lapses. It was shuttered for 14 years after a devastating fire in 1995, one of Japan’s most serious nuclear accidents before this year’s crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Prefecture and city officials found that the operator had tampered with video images of the fire to hide the scale of the disaster. A top manager at the plant recently committed suicide, on the day that Japan’s atomic energy agency announced that efforts to recover the device would cost almost $21.9 million. And, like several other reactors, Monju lies on an active fault.

The plant, a $12 billion project, has a history of safety lapses. It was shuttered for 14 years after a devastating fire in 1995, one of Japan’s most serious nuclear accidents before this year’s crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Prefecture and city officials found that the operator had tampered with video images of the fire to hide the scale of the disaster. A top manager at the plant recently committed suicide, on the day that Japan’s atomic energy agency announced that efforts to recover the device would cost almost $21.9 million. And, like several other reactors, Monju lies on an active fault.

“Let’s say they make this fix, which is very complicated,” Mr. Ban said. “The rest of the reactor remains highly dangerous. And an accident at Monju would have catastrophic consequences beyond what we are seeing at Fukushima.”

Japan badly needs sources of energy. By closing the loop on its nuclear fuel cycle, Japan aims to reuse, recycle and produce fresh fuel for its 54 reactors.

“Monju is a vital national asset,” said Noritomo Narita, a spokesman here in Tsuruga for the reactor’s operator, the government-backed Japan Atomic Energy Agency. “In a country so poor in resources, such as Japan, the efficient use of nuclear fuel is our national policy, and our mission.”

Critics have been fighting the project since its inception in the 1970s. “It’s Japan’s most dangerous reactor,” said Miwako Ogiso, secretary general of the Council of the People of Fukui Prefecture Against Nuclear Power. “It’s Japan’s most nonsensical reactor.”