A new “dry storage facility” for spent nuclear fuel will be built at the Onagawa nuclear power plant. The president of Tohoku Electric Power Company says, “It is safe from a supply standpoint.”

Regarding the “dry storage facility” that Tohoku Electric Power plans to use as a temporary storage site for spent nuclear fuel for Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant Unit 2, scheduled to start up in November, President Higuchi said, “From a stock perspective, I feel safe.” It is expected that after the restart of the second power unit of the Onagawa nuclear power plant, the fuel pool in which spent nuclear fuel is stored will be filled in about four years. Spent nuclear fuel is transported from Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture to a temporary storage facility in Mutsu City, Aomori Prefecture. On the other hand, Tohoku Electric Power does not currently plan to transport the waste to a reprocessing plant for the nuclear fuel cycle and plans to build a new “dry storage facility” at the nuclear power plant site. Although the prospects for integrating spent nuclear fuel into the nuclear fuel cycle remain uncertain, at a press conference on the 26th, President Higuchi acknowledged that “dry storage” would provide peace of mind. Tohoku Electric Power President Kojiro Higuchi: “We are currently applying for dry storage, preparing for the risks, so I think we can feel safe in terms of storing spent fuel.”